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Marmaduke, a review by Dragonfire

I wasn't really wanting to see this one, but my mom wanted to see it, so I went with her.  She enjoyed it more than I did.

Most of the movie deals with Marmaduke - a large Great Dane - adjusting after his owners move to California.  The dog park he spends time at is compared to high school and there are cliques of dogs.  He gets bullied by the dog leading the pedigree group and then he tries to act different to fit in more.  When he manages to do that, he turns his back on the dogs who accepted him from the beginning.  There are also issues with the family since Phil is so wrapped up in his new job that he basically ignores everyone. 

This is a movie with real people and real dogs.  Effects are used to make the animals look like they are talking.  The mouth movements sort of work, though they look off at times.  The animals talk to each other and Marmaduke even addresses the audience, but the human characters can't hear the animals talk.  I have seen the Marmaduke comic strip, but not that often, so really all I know is that it is about a large dog.  The plot for the movie is very simple and predictable.  A character attempting to fit in at a new place is nothing new, though it is slightly different to apply that to dogs. 

Most of the attempts at humor fail to be funny.  There fart jokes and some other gross humor that isn't funny.  A few silly moments with the dogs are slightly funny and that is about it.  Too often, Marmaduke will do something wrong and then Phil or Debbie will stand there and say his name is an exasperated way and that is supposed to be funny.  It isn't.  At all.  It gets really old, really quick.  Some of the dogs end up in danger and that bugs me.  I know it is just a movie, but I don't find animals in danger entertaining.  Also, Phil comes across as a huge jerk.  His way of dealing with Marmaduke is just to yell at him instead of actually trying to train him for the longest time.  He only puts the effort out for that when it impacts his job.  His treatment of Marmaduke really annoys me and I can't stand the character.

None of the characters are that interesting, though some of the dogs are cute.  The voices for the animals are fine, though Owen Wilson's voice really doesn't fit such a large dog. 

There is very little that is entertaining in this movie and I have no plans to watch it every again.



I did post a longer review at Epinions a few days ago.

Marmaduke

(From Marmaduke on June 26th, 2010)

The Language of Love, a review by Jimmy

                       

Title: The Language of Love (1969)
Original Title:Genre: Documentary
Director: Torgny Wickman           
Rating: 18 (UK)
Length: 1h43
Video: Widescreen
Audio: English
Subtitles: No Subtitles

Plot:
The mother of all sex education films. A modern, advance film about sexual education and behaviour based on clinical research by famous American and Swedish doctors. The film deals with all kinds of problems connected with the sexual relationships of people, including the role of sex in society, the question of prejudices and taboos, sex in clothes and sex in art.

I have this one because it is one of the 3 films in my new Christina Lindberg boxset that I've receive today. This film is not the reason why I've bought the set (Exposed is the reason), but is here so why not watching it.

This a Swedish documentary made in 1969 about sexuality. Most of the time this is the 4 doctors who talk in a living room, here we have the first problem : the director had decide to make the movie in english and that make the dialogue hard to understand without subtitle (many medical terms and some doctors speak with a very pronounce Swedish accent). The quality of the print is not bad, but not really great either (a lot of scene are really dark). Between the doctor parts we see a visual exemple of what they talk about : female masturbation, sex class education, diaphragm installation (that doesn't look like the funiest thing to do for a woman, but I'm a man so maybe I'm completly wrong on that), how to caress your partner, ....

The documentary shows some sexual penetration, but this is not pornographic at all. This movie was probably presented at school class in Sweden at this time (that's not for nothing if they are less sexually repress than the average North American). It could be a good sex education material even now, but because of the language choice it's doubtfull.

Not something that I will watch again, not that it's bad, but it's too academic  for my taste.

Rating : 


(From The little known movie review depot on March 11th, 2008)

"Due South" marathon, a review by addicted2dvd

Free Willie
After a young purse snatcher named Willie sees an armed robbery, Fraser is determined to prove the boy wasn't involved. Ray reluctantly agrees to help Fraser prove the boy's innocence as well as find the true criminals, even though he's risking his own job to do so.

My Thoughts:
This was a fun episode. There was a couple scenes I literally laughed out loud on. I love that new girl that has the hots for Fraser.... and Fraser's reaction to her is hilarious. I looks like he won't be able to cool her off any time soon. That is if he would even want to. Hell I would say go for it!  I will say though... that the crime in this story was pretty predictable. I had it figured out pretty early. But I don't think the actual crimes they solve is the central storyline in this series.

My Rating:

(From "Due South" marathon on June 23rd, 2009)