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March 31, 2009

Marley & Me

I finally got around to watching Marley & Me, which releases on DVD today. Maybe it's partly because I'm a dog person who's enormously attached to her own canine companion (a sweet, hyper little Jack Russell named Sophie), but I loved the hell out of this movie. Great performances by both Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson -- Wilson sometimes gets on my nerves, but here he was perfect. I liked the use of this couple's ongoing relationship with their crazy dog as a device to track the trajectory of a marriage from that blissful honeymoon optimism when all things seem possible, through the inevitable changes that life brings to all of us, both individually and in our partnerships -- especially when children come along and we're forced to assess our values and make hard choices.

I liked Marley & Me much, much more than expected to, even given the positive reviews I'd read; in fact, it may be my favorite family movie of the past several years. I guess I shouldn't really be surprised, given that one of the screenwriters on it is Scott Frank, who's penned some awesome films including The Lookout, Minority Report (yes, I did actually like that one), Out of Sight and Get Shorty. And it's directed by David Frankel, who helmed The Devil Wears Prada, which I also liked.

My one quibble with the film is that I didn't find it realistic that a family with kids living on the single income of a newspaper columnist (even with his salary doubled when he agrees to write the column daily) could possibly afford to buy the home they move to in Boca -- not a mansion, sure, but it's a newish home, large and very nice, with an inground pool. I poked around on Boca real estate sites and homes that look similar to the one they move to in the film look to go for around $1,000,000; is it at all realistic that a newspaper columnist, even before the layoffs hit hard, could have afforded a home like that? Seriously? I live in Seattle, and our family lives fairly decently on two incomes -- mine as a film critic and editor and my husband's as a tech writer working on a contract gig for a "major software company in Redmond, WA." We make a decent living, but there's no way in hell we could afford to buy that expensive a house on two incomes, much less one. I'm just saying.

Then again, when Aniston was on Friends, she and Courteney Cox lived in a remarkably spacious and well-appointed New York City apartment for what their income level was, so I suppose I should just let go of my tendency to obsess over the details and just appreciate that I liked the movie overall. Great family film with a lot more depth than I expected, and well-worth owning on DVD, whether or not you have kids to pretend to buy it for. It's a good film to have on-hand for those morose, moody kind of nights when you just want to curl up under a quilt with a nice glass of wine, a good movie and a box of tissues, get your heart warmed up, and have a good cry. Because you will cry at the end --yes, even you, tough guy. So here, have a tissue.

Posted by kvoynar at March 31, 2009 11:25 AM

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Posted by: bunnybeth at March 31, 2009 05:32 PM

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