ohmidog!

A Canadian writer plans to avoid seeing the movie Marley & Me, just as he avoided reading the book. His reasons?

“Spot. Josette. Lulu. Nipper. Paddy. Orly. Brownie. Bijou. Byng. Avery. Tiger. Barkley. Wiggins. Sidney. Those are some of the real-life dogs who’ve departed on my watch.”

Craig MacInnes, in an opinion piece for the Ottawa Citizen, says he, for one, has seen enough dogs die during his life. Why go to the movies to see it again?

“Figuratively speaking, dogs rarely make it to the end-credits of our human lifetimes, preceding us to the hereafter in what is surely Nature’s cruelest, most screwed-up plan. Innocent, loyal and trusting, they are rewarded for their blind devotion with a lousy 10 to 15 years, while we get to dither and careen through seven or eight full decades, a journey collectively freighted by the nagging ache of all our losses.”

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If you’ve read the book, then see the movie, you may notice that while Marley is still shown with all his behavioral warts on the big screen, the story has been sanitized in at least one way: The real Marley came from a  breeder in Florida, while in the movie Marley is a “rescue.”

It’s a minor alteration, and far from nefarious, but it does show the clout animal welfare organizations can have – and how, when the media cooperates with them, they return the favor.

Even PETA — despite its objections to using animals for entertainment, despite a scene in which a dog is walking on its front legs while its rear is held by a passenger in a moving car — has given the movie “two paws up” for sending the message that pets, no matter how problematic their behavior, are for keeps.

“Dogs are members of the family, and Marley and Me reminds moviegoers that they deserve to be treated as such,” says PETA Vice President Lisa Lange. “We hope this movie inspires people to stand by their animal companions — even when it’s not easy — and to love them unconditionally, just as they love us.”

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The reviews are in, and there’s widespread agreement that Marley is … a cute dog.

All 22 of him.

That’s how many yellow labs the moviemakers used in the making of Marley & Me, reviews for which are — unlike the dog — mixed.

Associated Press movie critic Christy Lemire said the movie has “more than its share of hanky moments …  We’re not talking about just a tear or two welling up — we’re talking grown men and women snuffling and sobbing uncontrollably, then dashing from the theater before the lights come up to avoid making eye contact with all the other blubbering saps.

“Seeing the ending, in all its horrifically sad detail, is bad enough if you’re a grown-up (and a dog person). If you’re a little kid expecting a happy puppy movie, “Marley & Me” could cause serious trauma requiring hours of therapy and many scoops of ice cream to repair.

But Lemire conludes that “it’s not a particularly good movie” and has “no great momentum …  just a long, flat arc toward the inevitable.”

(Flat arc? Can there be such a thing?)

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It’s finally here! No, not Christmas, the opening of the movie, Marley & Me.

One of three new dog movies — and by far the most publicized — Marley & Me, based on the best-selling book by former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist John Grogan, stars Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston as a young couple that, preparing for parenthood, gets a dog as a trial run.

By turns funny, sad and uplifting — or at least intended to be such — the movie looks at life with Marley, a hyper and ill-behaved yellow lab who nevertheless becomes a cherished and indispensable part of the family.

In that way, it’s the story of Everydog — though every dog thankfully isn’t the handful Marley proves to be.

Early reports are that it will both make you feel good and make you cry, and — given the popularity of the book and pre-release hype around the movie — it’s likely to be a box office winner.

Here at ohmidog!, we’ve saved all our hype, and whatever the opposite of hype is, for today, with three more pieces related to the book/movie/phenomenon that is Marley & Me — a look at its early reviews, a look at how the movie isn’t 100 percent true to the book. We’ll also hear from one commentator who has had his fill of movies in which dogs die, and doesn’t plan to see it.

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at two more new dog movies, “Hotel for Dogs” and “Wendy and Lucy.”