MARMADUKE — ★1/2 — Lee Pace, William H. Macy; and featuring the voice of Owen Wilson; rated PG (violence, vulgarity, brief drugs, slurs); in general release
"Marmaduke" gives a voice to a character — the destructive, oversize canine star of the long-running comic strip — that normally doesn't have a voice.
That voice, by the way, is provided by Owen Wilson, whose low-energy, low-key shtick only works on a limited basis. And it certainly doesn't work in a frantic, at-times crude, live-action comedy like this.
It's obvious that the filmmakers were hoping Wilson would do what Bill Murray did as the voice of the title character in the two likeminded "Garfield" movies. Only they're forgetting that those films weren't particularly good and that they had diminishing returns at the box office.
As voiced by Wilson, Marmaduke is a good-natured but furniture-wrecking family pet that continually bedevils his hapless owner, Phil Winslow (Lee Pace).
Phil has recently moved his family from Kansas to Southern California, where he's become the new marketing director for a pet food company. He's desperately hoping to impress his new boss, Don Twombly (William H. Macy), but is neglecting his wife, Debbie (Judy Greer), and their three kids.
It's been a rough transition for the Winslows — and even more for Marmaduke, who may have a feline best friend, Carlos (the voice of George Lopez), but can't really connect with the top dogs at the nearby pet park.
Director Tom Dey ("Failure to Launch") and screenwriters Tim Rasmussen and Vince Di Meglio stretch the strip's one-joke concept out for 90 minutes.
But it probably wasn't a good idea for them and the film to reference both "Pygmalion" and "The Lady and the Tramp," and lift directly from "Some Kind of Wonderful" and TV's "The O.C." Watching all of them would be preferable to watching this movie.
Very little of what happens here is funny, though some younger audiences may be amused by the sight of real-life pooches and other pets "talking" — aided by Wilson, Lopez and other guest voices, as well as some computer-generated trickery.
Their live-action co-stars look humiliated to be appearing in this nonsense. You have to wonder what it was that got the talented Macy onboard, aside from a paycheck.
"Marmaduke" is rated PG and features violent content and imagery, mostly of it slapstick in nature (household destruction, as well as animal violence and some animal-in-peril elements), crude humor involving and references to various bodily functions (flatulence and scatological), other off-color references and language (some innuendo and suggestive talk), brief drug content (use of tranquilizers and steroids references), and derogatory language and slurs. Running time: 87 minutes.
e-mail: jeff@desnews.com