If you are looking for the kind of film that the whole family can watch with shared laughs, tears and warm fuzzies, consider your search over. Marley & Me hits almost everything right to entertain almost any family imaginable. It avoids virtually every pitfall plaguing the kids & family genre without resorting to crassness or sarcasm. In other words, this film is simply excellent.
After moving to Florida, John and Jenny Grogan (Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston) adopt a puppy to see if they’re ready for the responsibilities of parenthood. The dog, Marley, proves to be every bit a whirlwind as life itself. Through the years, and many ups and downs, Marley is the Grogan’s constant companion and provides John with material for his weekly column. The column and the dog both become objects of devotion, praise, scorn, and frustration as life passes by.
This film could have been incredibly tacky, cheesy and eye-roll inducing. Does it have a few predictable moments? Yes, but not as many as you might expect. The story itself is something that sounds dead-on like a Hallmark Channel movie of the week featuring second-rate talent creaking their way through a stiff but emotionally manipulative script. That Marley & Me is none of these things is incredibly refreshing.
Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson have wonderful chemistry and are acting well within their abilities. The writing (based on a true story) never strays too far out of the bounds of reality. It gets appropriately silly sometimes, which may not cater well to the cynical and uber-serious crowds, and matches the ebb and flow of real life pretty darn well. The restraint required to avoid cutesy clichés is hefty and I think it may even weigh on the pace just a bit.
One note of caution is that Marley & Me contains some mature content. Most of it will go over the heads of the youngest viewers but tweens and teens will understand it. There’s some implied sexuality and even an instance of skinny-dipping- pretty surprising stuff for a PG film. One thing I’m not crazy about is the swearing. Is it necessary to drop the s-bomb in a film marketed to young children? I think not. The cursing isn’t a deal breaker, though, because there is enough charm and heart in this film to move you past those few isolated incidents pretty quickly.
There’s nothing technically impressive about this film but Marley & Me is an absolute charmer. It’s emotionally honest about married life, parenthood, and pet ownership without resorting to forcing emotional cues. The issues faced within the reels aren’t sugar-coated or watered-down for easy consumption. While it may seem that this film caters toward dog-owners, it plays well to anyone who has ever owned a pet before. This is just part of the family-movie magic inherent to this film.
There have been several attempts to rejuvenate the characters and comedy of the original Get Smart series starring Don Adams but none of the small-screen efforts ever worked out. Given Hollywood’s track record of butchering adaptations of classic TV shows, it came as little surprise that plenty of eyes rolled when this film was announced. Fortunately, the result isn’t the disastrous abomination fans of the show had feared.
After years of working as an information analyst for CONTROL, Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell) is denied an agent position because he is too valuable behind a desk to risk in the field. When terrorist organization KAOS attacks CONTROL’s secret base, agent identities are exposed, thrusting Max into full agent activation overnight. He gets a new codename (Agent 86) and partners up with the lovely Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), while the former hotshot Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson) is forced into deskwork now that he is among the exposed.
Smart’s clumsiness generates plenty of chagrin for the no-nonsense 99 as they travel across the globe in an attempt to prevent KAOS from carrying out a nuclear attack on American soil. His attempts to be a suave secret agent blow up in his face but he proves himself a worthwhile addition to the force in the end. Along the way he and 99 face a number of physical and mental challenges that bring them closer as professional partners and then some.
Recently I have altered my approach to judging movies based on other materials. It’s my opinion that it is unfair to judge a film as an adaptation because that kind of comparison is usually loaded with bias. Sometimes you can’t help but compare films with their source material but it’s wise to do so only as a reference point. Get Smart retools a lot of its source material out of necessity. With a modern setting, there are fewer cute gadgets because most useful spy technology already exists in miniature form thanks to technological advancements. While this may not have hurt the rebooted James Bond films, it does take away from the humor of Get Smart because the show was always a spoof of TV spy dramas and the Bond flicks. Without all the silly gadgets, the film loses a little bit of ground to stand on.
The only other comparison I care to make is about the relationship between Smart and 99. On the show, 99 thought her partner was dreamy and they were already a couple. Then again, they were both also seasoned agents. The film is an origin story, so it makes sense for the pair to have to grow to like each other. Fans of the show might not like it but then again, if they tried to make it too much like the show, fans would complain about a lack of originality.
Given Get Smart’s roots as a spoof of the 60s spy craze, it’s a little jarring to see how serious the film gets at times. Agent 99’s stern outlook tends to neutralize Steve Carell’s goofiness early on, sucking some of the fun out of it. Carell hits his stride around halfway through the film and it makes sense for him not to eschew the cocky swagger of Don Adams. In retrospect, it’s refreshing to see Smart as an unconfident new agent. It seems to me, though, that Carell puts a little too much Michael Scott and 40 Year Old Virgin into this new incarnation of Maxwell Smart.
Despite her character’s killjoy attitude through much of the film, major props go out to Anne Hathaway for her performance. She produces a solid blend of sex appeal and toughness befitting of a modern female special agent. While stunt performers were certainly involved, Hathaway looks like she belongs in all of her action scenes. She nails all of her hand-to-hand combat moves and, most importantly, looks like she is willing to kill the bad guys. She’s not just a pretty face maneuvered through blocky choreography. If nothing else, this should give moviegoers a little more confidence in her ability to play Catwoman in next year’s The Dark Knight Rises.
Despite solid performances by its leads, Get Smart does suffer one fatal flaw: its resolution is far too predictable. Even if they weren’t trying to keep it a secret, the identity of the mole can be reasoned out even before the film’s midway point. If you take the mystery out of a spy comedy, you’re only left with the comedy, which is too often stifled here.
There’s a reason why Get Smart worked as a TV show in the 60s. It was a time when audiences sought escapist entertainment to take their minds off of the gloomy world they lived in. That kind of escapism isn’t in vogue anymore and much of it seems silly when we look back on it now. That is why the Austin Powers films were so successful- they were a tongue-in-cheek spoof and homage to 60s spy entertainment that went beyond Get Smart’s clean humor. Had Austin Powers not made it to the big screen, a Get Smart movie might have been more warmly welcomed. Instead, it feels like a last-minute responder to an already full party.
Quite possibly the most charming film I’ve seen since Big Fish, and that’s saying something. Let me warn you though, this film is incredibly vulgar, filled with cursing and references to all kinds of stuff kids don’t need to see. While the plot reads like a standard family road trip comedy, Little Miss Sunshine is brutally honest in its portrayal as to how screwed up people can be.
A family puts all their effort into making sure little Olive gets to the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, because it is her biggest dream to do so. Then comes the quirkiness. Olive’s parents are strapped for money and fight a good bit. Her mom is neurotic and over-worked, while her dad is a failure at trying to sell his motivational self-help series. Her brother is a Nietzsche reading artsy-fartsy type who has taken a vow of silence until he achieves his goal of becoming a jet pilot. Grandpa just got kicked out of the old folks home for snorting heroin and manages to fill in those silent moments with a barrage of obscenities. Finally, there’s Uncle Frank- a gay Proust scholar who recently botched a suicide attempt after learning that his ex-boyfriend is now dating the guy that beat him out for a prestigious grant.
After discovering that Olive has gotten a chance to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant the family loads up into a rickety VW Bus and heads off on a journey you’ll never forget. No matter how hard you may try.
Some liken it to National Lampoon’s Vacation, except that Sunshine is darker and presents plenty more obstacles in the family’s way before they can get where they’re going both literally (the pageant) and as a family. It seems to me that the graveness of some of the things they encounter provides the balance that many family road trip films lack. Sure, there are plenty of clichéd, been-there-done-that scenarios, but Little Miss Sunshine doesn’t give in to the sappiness of those clichés. Instead, they bludgeon them to death with the right mix of dead-pan humor, bleakness and obscenity to elevate those clichés to a new level of comedy.
There are plenty of laughs in this film. The complete and utter lack of rationality in some of the choices that are made are so absurd that you can’t help but laugh. Then there are the inappropriate laughs, which you know shouldn’t be funny but are anyway. That’s the real secret to this film’s formula of success. Portraying situations that would be treated as a somber moment in other family trip films, effectively killing the humor for a moment of sap, but then throwing compounding amounts of absurdity on top of it to break the norm.
Raunchy, obscene good fun abounds in this film but the cursing is a bit too casual, which held Little Miss Sunshine back in my ratings scale. If the vulgarity had been toned down just a smidge, I might have supported this film for Best Picture at the Oscars. While it is certainly an excellent movie and one of the best of the year, I hesitate to declare it THE best of the year.
Definitely watch this film. It’ll warm your heart and warp your mind.
There have been several attempts to rejuvenate the characters and comedy of the original Get Smart series starring Don Adams but none of the small-screen efforts ever worked out. Given Hollywood’s track record of butchering adaptations of classic TV shows, it came as little surprise that plenty of eyes rolled when this film was announced. Fortunately, the result isn’t the disastrous abomination fans of the show had feared.
Quite possibly the most charming film I’ve seen since Big Fish, and that’s saying something. Let me warn you though, this film is incredibly vulgar, filled with cursing and references to all kinds of stuff kids don’t need to see. While the plot reads like a standard family road trip comedy, Little Miss Sunshine is brutally honest in its portrayal as to how screwed up people can be.
