'Marmaduke' Review: A Comic Strip That Should've Been Put Down Long Ago Gets CGI Treatment

Brad Anderson’s long-running saga of the melty-looking Winslow family and the gangling, interfering Great Dane that should’ve been put to sleep ages ago gets a film treatment, and once-mute Marmaduke gets expressive CGI-arched eyebrows and a voice provided by Owen Wilson.

You'd think they would've gone convertible.

Related Content

• "Ceremony": A Callow Movie About Callowness
  May 5, 2011
• "Hall Pass" Gets a Load of Farrelly Brothers-Style Raunch
  February 24, 2011
• Investigating the Problem of Time in "Midnight in Paris"
  June 2, 2011
• Summer Movie Preview
  May 20, 2010
• Movie Industry People of 2011
  December 29, 2011

More About

• Marmaduke
• Owen Wilson
• Brad Anderson
• Lee Pace
• Sam Elliott

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Relocated from Kansas to Orange County by master Phil (Lee Pace), Marmaduke tries to fit in at the new dog park. It’s like “high school for dogs,” explains a helpful mutt; why a dog would explain something in these terms is unclear, though it prepares us for an off-the-rack HS movie plot, as the hermitic one-panel strip opens up to a canine social world with its own strata, topped by purebreds, which Marmaduke must negotiate.

In the parallel human B story, Phil spends a lot of time working to provide for his family. That thoughtful 'Duke sabotages Phil's professional life, but the rest of us can hardly forget the workaday world in this haze of Dog Gone Awful puns (“It’s raining cats and us”), surreal set pieces (“A surf competition for dogs?”), soundtrack poots, and a Sam Elliott-voiced mongrel maiming a dogcatcher off-screen, while Fox secures the rights to Hägar the Horrible.