Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		1.5

Marley & Me: The Puppy Years Blu-ray Movie Review

Bad dog!

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater August 18, 2011

Man’s-best-friend sob story Marley & Me recently made it to the #5 spot in a BBC Magazine poll of movies that make men cry—beating out the likes of Field of Dreams, Chariots of Fire, and Rocky—but the completely unnecessary prequel The Puppy Years will make you bawl for a different reason: it’s a soulless, excruciatingly awful straight-to-video cash-in that has next to nothing to do with its warmhearted, emotion-milking predecessor. To be fair, although Marley & Me carried a family-friendly PG rating, it was more geared toward animal-loving adults, while The Puppy Years, as you might imagine, panders to the 5-and-under crowd. And boy does it ever pander. This time around, yellow lab Marley is a rambunctious pup who talks—complete with borderline-creepy CGI mouth movements—and spends an inordinate amount of time farting. The film owes less to the original Marley & Me than it does to last year’s execrable Marmaduke, which set something of a new low for the flatulent talking dog sub-genre. The sole saving grace of The Puppy Years is that no one ever plays or mentions “Who Let the Dogs Out?,” but I assume that’s only because this extremely low-budget production couldn’t afford to license the song.

Obviously, Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson are out, and the film explains their absence by saying that their characters are “away on a writing assignment.” Their young pup Marley, the so-called “worst dog in the world,” has been left with dorky tween-aged dogsitter Bodi Grogan (Travis Turner), who should win some kind of award for dumbest fictional name. (What is he, a goofyfooted surfer from the late-1980s? An antagonistic jock in a coming-of-age high school comedy?) With his workaholic mom (Chelah Horsdal) away at a conference, Bodi himself is being babysat by his crotchety ex-Marine grandpa, Fred (Donnelly Rhodes), a neat-freak and rule-stickler who likes the beds made so crisply you can bounce a quarter off the duvet.

Fred and Marley clearly aren’t going to get along, and the yellow lab wastes no time getting into trouble, stealing gramps’ SPAM sandwiches, blowing fart bubbles in the pool—“Check it out! Jacuzzi!”—and making off with the old man’s dentures. Bodi, however, has struck a bargain with his mom; if he can “learn to be responsible” by training Marley in time for her return, she’ll get him a puppy of his own. (You’ll never guess what happens in the end.) Conveniently, Bodi hears about the “Ultimate Puppy Championship”—think Olympics for dogs—and decides to coach a “canine agility team” comprised of Marley and a neighbor lady’s labs, Fuchsia and Moose, who can also talk, their mouths warped and flapping in a grotesque, CGI-assisted mimicry of human utterance.

In fact, there’s a whole animal shelter’s worth of talking pets in The Puppy Years. There’s a team of pugs called “The Barkinators,” a gang of Australian cattle dogs who go by “The Thunder from Down Under,” and—for good measure—a cat named Cat who speaks in the poorest excuse for a French accent I think I’ve ever heard. Aside from Marley, who’s capably voiced by Diary of a Wimpy Kid’s Grayson Russell, the voice acting here is pretty bad, especially from the kids who have been forced to use terrible German accents to personify a trio of miniature Doberman pinschers. These twitchy pups—Turbo, Axel, and Liesl—are the prized, sausage-munching showdogs of the film’s stereotypically Teutonic antagonist, Hans (Alex Zahara), an SUV-driving goon who wants to win the Puppy Championship at all costs. If there was an equivalent of the “Alan Smithee” director’s credit for actors—who want to disavow themselves from a disaster of a role—Zahara would want to take it. Travis Turner, whose only previous feature film role was in Easter Bunny Bloodbath, is okay as “Bodi Grogan”—a name that deserves to be put inside quotation marks —but he’s mildly irritating in the way that most young teenagers are mildly irritating, especially when he gives his grandpa lip.

There’s not much of a plot beyond “train the puppies, win the competition, learn some dutiful life lessons, bond with grandpa,” and the entirety of the drawn-out middle portion of the story could’ve probably been compressed into a short montage. Even at 86-minutes the film seems much too long; The Puppy Years is basically a sit-com episode stretched out to feature film length with the dreary, undercaffinated hijinks of a pack of yapping mutts. But perhaps I’m being too harsh. The film is not meant for critics, and it’s certainly not meant for real fans of 2008’s Marley & Me, who will be severely disappointed by this Marley-in-name-only production, which lacks the heart, drama, and yes, the budget and star-power of the original. Will it entertain kids, though? Possibly, providing they’re five or under. You have to be a pup yourself to appreciate this dog chow.

Marley & Me: The Puppy Years Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Naturally, since this is a comparatively low budget production, The Puppy Years simply isn't going to look as good as the $60 million Marley & Me. Still, cheap cinematography and flat lighting aside, there's nothing technically wrong with the film's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer, which certainly won't set your plasma screen ablaze with color and clarity, but seems to be true to its source. I couldn't find any verification online, but I think it's safe to assume the film was shot digitally, and this looks to be the case. The image is generally bright and clean, with noise showing up in some of the darker scenes, but never to the point of distraction. Color is realistic and dense, with decent black levels and okay contrast, and while the image is rarely tack sharp, you will notice fine detail in the usual places—namely, skin and clothing textures. Noise reduction and edge enhancement are sparsely used—if at all—and I didn't notice any blatant compression issues. The Puppy Years isn't exactly eye candy, but I doubt the five-year-olds watching will mind.

Marley & Me: The Puppy Years Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Marley & Me: The Puppy Years arrives on Blu-ray with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track that delivers exactly what you'd expect from this kind of production—a serviceable presentation that gets the basics right but never impresses by going above and beyond the call of sonic duty. The most important element of the mix is dialogue, and there are no problems here; the vocals are all clean and balanced and easy to understand. The soundtrack is made up of dippy, cheaply-licensed pop tunes, and the music sounds okay for what it is, although it's never particularly rich or immersive. The rear channels get almost no action—a stereo mix would've sufficed—but you will hear occasional ambient effects, like barking and quiet outdoorsy sounds. Nothing major. There are no major problems—no hissing, drop-outs, crackles, etc.—and in that limited sense, this track is successful as doing what it needs to do. The disc includes optional English SDH, Spanish, and French subtitles.

Marley & Me: The Puppy Years Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Marley & Me: The Puppy Years Goes to Training Camp (1080p, 9:45): A short making-of featurette, focusing mostly on the animal training.
• Part of the Family (1080p, 2:06): More behind-the-scenes footage, set to a cheesy reggae song.
• My Favorite Moments (1080p, 4:17): A quick piece about the interactions between the cast and their animal co-stars.

Marley & Me: The Puppy Years Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Marley & Me: The Puppy Years has naught to do with the 2008 drama-comedy starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, a film known to bring grown-ass men to tears. Rather, it's a quick cash-in prequel that forgoes a meaningful story in favor of the novelty factor of talking animals, and it's aimed exclusively at kids too young to know how bad it really is. (Look! The dog just farted in the pool! Gross!) For now, the film is exclusively available at Walmart and on Walmart.com, so you'll have to track it down there if you absolutely must buy it.