The Coalition of the Swilling

My husband wanted to go see it, but I demurred. At the risk of sounding like a total ass, I don't want to see a movie about people who can't/won't control their dog. How is that funny?

I watched an episode of The Dog Whisperer where they were featured with their new dog (also a yellow Lab) and they were totally clueless about how much energy a Lab has and how they have to be mentally challenged or they get bored (duh) and that makes them destructive (duh). They had hired some sort of trainer who was useless as tits on a boar hog. I'm surprised Cesar didn't smack them both across the head with a 2x4.

I bought the book as an "airplane book", which means I went from laughing out loud to sobbing, all in front of my fellow passengers.
I stayed away from the movie, too. Most of the time, if I've read the book, the movie never compares to what I visualized in my head while I read the book. (Most disappointing was "Jurassic Park", where entire portions of the book, including the last chapter where he ties everything together, were left out of the movie. I was almost yelling at the screen at the end.)
While I'm at it: Worst Movie to Watch on an Airplane: "My Dog Skip". I get teary just thinking about it.

Lisa, I saw that episode, too, and had pretty much the same reaction. Cesar should have taken the dog or the chickens. I'll pass of the movie.

My Ladybug won't watch a movie where a dog dies at the end. I'm kind of with Lisa on this, in that watching a dog destroy things for comic effect gets tired. If I wished I could turn loose the Official Puppy and get a trilogy's worth of "laughs" as she teeths on everything in our house that happens not to be a dog toy.

She's also clever enough to knock over a hamper as a diversion, and then sneak into the office to go after the computer cables. I think we should rename the breed SUN Tzu instead of Shih Tzu.

We saw that Dog Whisperer episode too. Poor chickens. I remember he said that if Marley hadn't been so relatively laid-back he'd have raided the coop himself.

The problem with the movie is precisely the fact that all Marley's most redeeming moments ~ standing guard on the corner all night after a murder in the neighborhood, mutely taking the pounding Jennie administers when she loses the baby and lashes out, and on and on ~ aren't IN it. He WASN'T just a BAD dog, he was an amazing puppers who had his moments, like all of us, but Lord knows you couldn't prove it in the film. Plus, he was COMPLETELY lab, which (if any of you have ever had a lab from infancy) means at LEAST 3 solid years of stoopid, labradork, good natured couch eating, table sliding, dumbass, gumby boy stuff neither you nor they have any control over. They chase stuff. It's a romp, that's all. Be it their tail, chickens, the dog through the fence or, in our case, a 15 year old cat who knew to jump on the dining room table because MacKinley couldn't jump ALL the way on it. She'd sit in the middle, he'd launch...and then slide off. How do we know this? The front paw slide scratches discovered when the sun hit the top just right one day ~ the grooved indentations started about halfway into the middle and went right off the edge. (Burbies had to be so smug during it all.)

You can crate them to prevent losing the couch while you're at the grocery store (took us twice ~ as in TWO new dogs/TWO new couches ~ to learn that lesson), but ~ in MacKinley's case, for instance ~ they'll lay quietly at your feet, gazing adoringly up at you...and then you notice the table leg in his mouth he's gnawing unconsciously.

Marley spoke to Lab owners, because we've ALL been there, because they're all the same. And we've tried desperately to warn folks who've met our boys when they were older and decided they had to have a lab "just like Piggie/Schmacks/BeauBeau".

"No, no, NO!!!!", we always tell them. "You don't know what you have to go through to GET to this dog!" Literally YEARS of 'what you have to go through' to get our dog.

But then you have the dog of a lifetime. A dog that, as major dad always says, "can fly the space shuttle". And that was what Marley was all about. That was what spoke to lab people and that's what was completely absent from the film.

As for the Dog Whisperer espisode, we saw it too, and thought "how can they be surprised when Gracie's only, like, 18 months old?"

One more thought concerning the years of nut-job-ville. The end comes suddenly, out of nowhere. We call it "The Maturity Bomb". And when it goes off around year 3, you have the dog of your dreams. It's kinda like childbirth ~ sucks GOING through it, but all you remember is the good stuff afterwards.

The Dog Whisperer episode confirmed my suspicions about the book. I never read it, but heard a lot about it. My impression was that dogs are only as bad as their owner allows them to be, and that these must be really stupid dog owners.

When I saw them on TV with their next dog, I decided I was right. They are idiots regarding dogs. The man is simply a good writer and our culture is such that most readers don't recognize idiocy of this sort. Our culture doesn't understand leadership, responsibility, or the proper place in the pecking order that dogs should be assigned.

So, I'm not inclined to see this movie. I like Jennifer Aniston, but Owen Wilson cancels her out. I simply will not willingly watch a movie with him in it. Then the subject of a dog ruling a family and that being called cute and heart warming while it destroys a house just doesn't interest me.

When the bookstore where I work was selling it like crazy, I noticed there was a "children's adaptation" of the book. . . I didn't have the nerve to see if they sidestepped the whole demise thing or what.

As for movies about destructive dogs, I'll take "Turner & Hooch."

The irony is, to depict on screen the wanton destruction of a poorly-trained dog, one requires a superbly-trained dog.