VIDEO: The trailer for Marley & Me
Will Jennifer Aniston ever get a good film role?
Here she's in David Frankel's follow-up to The Devil Wears Prada — a movie with no shortage of plum parts for women, Meryl Streep's Oscar-nominated turn among them — playing second fiddle to a dog. And don't think for a second that the "Me" in the title refers to Aniston's Jen Grogan. That distinction falls to Owen Wilson, who's at his lackadaisical best as John Grogan, a newspaper columnist whose 2005 memoir, subtitled Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog, served as this film's loose blueprint.
Some two dozen dogs hump, poop, and — yes — chew the scenery as Marley, a yellow Lab purchased on the cheap by the newlyweds because they aren't ready to start a family. Unfortunately, the "clearance puppy" takes a back seat (when he's not jumping out of it into traffic) to life's banalities-as-entertainment. But it's a bloated Kathleen Turner who's truly gone to the dogs, bearing the brunt of the humping Marley.