Dog love What is not trying to do filmmakers to frame the same stories in the most original and non-standard shell, playing on the banal moves, while it is possible. This includes the endless adaptations of Dickens’s “Christmas Song” and the endless exploitation of the image of Dracula, and in this case, the most standard teenager story is presented to the audience, but under the guise of a “dog movie.”
At the very beginning, with a visual parallel to the voiceover of the main character, we see a typical school analogue of everything that happens, fitting into the modest framework of the prologue. The school dyld, who is a loser and an outsider, suffers ridicule and is not able to gain the courage to fulfill himself. Next, the plot places everything seen in the skins of four-legged friends of a person. Well, after all, according to the scheme of the most standard allegories: instead of school - a dog park, where the same is divided into subcultures, and the main loser is sure to fall in love with the beauty queen, whose boyfriend is a mega-bully and the head of a bunch of similar sixes of a comic kind. Of course, the main character is immediately helped by other outsiders, one of whom classically falls in love with him, and then we are left with time to wait for the denouement, whether Marmadyuk will be blind to the attention of the person of his circle, or will do his best to conquer the main dog of the park.
Actually, all this dog love in no way combined with the rest of the storylines of the film. A typical American family, trying to realize the values of life by the end, is swept by some additional layer of background of the entire title story. And in fact, everything that happens does not become a film about animals, not a funny comedy about the relationship between family and a skodly dog, but a couple of classically banal stories served under the sauce of the original design idea. The feeling that it was originally a school teen comedy does not leave from the beginning to the credits, and the final competition in surfing completely sweeps away any doubts. The authors simply did not find what to replace competence and put on boards instead of people - dogs.
As a comedy is not funny, as a family movie is just boring, and only children from high school all this will be close and understandable, and the film is still positive and with a variety of dog breeds, which will also appreciate fans of this subgenre of films about animals.
And the problem with the film is not that it is an elementary understandable story, told not even in a new way, but simply retold in a different form, but that in addition to the originality of the presentation, everything else is quite empty here. The family is shown superficially, tricks cut the eyes with crooked graphics, the ending is drawn in unnecessary attempts to add tension, and humor is almost absent. And thus, in an attempt to make another fairy tale, you look at how all this is too vital, usually and household. And instead of having fun and distracting yourself from your problems, you begin to pile up strangers and let imaginary cockroaches into your head. While someone may even plunge into childhood and try to remember his similar period in life, if he sees some parallels with reality.
Uncomplicated grinding of banal plots, of course, also has the right to exist. After all, not so long ago, filled with all sorts of plagiarism, Avatar thwarted the mad success and love of the public, so why wouldn’t Marmadyuka find its viewers and those who will follow the story deeply?! The only question here is what the filmmakers did to please the viewer, and whether this project is invested in anything that should be present in it. Perhaps, to please a bunch of animals and spend time with a positive session of such a film will help, but that someone called this movie one of the best in its genre or the best comedy of the year – that’s hardly. For 1 time lovers of dogs and this genre direction may come to taste.
5 out of 10
Original