The adventures of the “world’s most lovable Great Dane” Marmaduke (voiced by Owen Wilson) and his best friend Carlos the Cat (voiced by George Lopez) as he becomes acquainted with his family’s posh new neighborhood.

CRITIQUE

I hated Garfield. I loathed the first Alvin and the Chipmunks. But in comparison to Marmaduke both of those unbearable disasters (who cares if they were box office hits) look like Academy Award winners, this truly awful film a family-friendly enterprise I can’t imagine any viewer of any age actually enjoying.

I guess I should have known this was how it was going to go. The film was only screened for critics at the very last minute before its June 4 release in theatres, the announcement coming so late I wasn’t able to attend. The trailers were painful at best, while the box office performance was so terrible the movie didn’t even manage to recoup its reported $50-million production budget.

Yet I’m a sucker for kids films, so although every fiber of my being told me to not bother I decided to give Marmaduke a look on Blu-ray. In all honesty, I’m not quite sure how I managed to sit through the whole thing. It’s an unfunny, tasteless, frequently boring and visually unappealing disaster. The script (based on the popular long-running comic strip by Brad Anderson and Phil Leeming) is virtually nonexistent, while director Tom Dey (Failure to Launch) appears to be doing nothing more than going through the motions behind the camera. The human cast (led by Lee Pace and Judy Greer) all look like they’d rather be anywhere else but here, while the combination of real animals and CGI is clumsy and frequently off-putting.

There is some good vocal work, especially from Emma Stone and Lopez, and I embarrassingly have to admit the signature surfing scene did make me smile. Small children, and I mean really small, like six and under, might enjoy a lot of this, although there is some sexual innuendo and moments of suspense parents might not want them to see.

Seriously, though, I couldn’t stand this picture. It’s almost as bad When in Rome, and had I seen it in a theatre I’d have been hard pressed to have given it a single star. Marmaduke isn’t just about a dog, it is one itself, its only real saving grace the fact that at a scant 88-minutes it’s so short the pain I suffered enduring it thankfully didn’t last very long.

THE VIDEO

Marmaduke is presented on a dual-layered 50GB Blu-ray MPEG-4 disc with a 1080p 2.35:1 Widescreen transfer. I will say this is a really great transfer, and on that front I have to give Fox some definite props. This Blu-ray looks absolutely terrific.

THE AUDIO

Available audio includes English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, Portuguese 5.1 Dolby Digital and French 5.1 Dolby Digital tracks with optional English SDH, French, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese and Spanish subtitles. The mix is solid, if at times a bit uneven. The film gets so loud and obnoxious with sound effects and music the dialogue can at times become a bit lost, requiring a bit of volume control with the remote from time to time.

THE EXTRAS

Extras here include:

• Cowabarka! More Surfing Dogs
• Canine Casting
• Deleted Scenes
• Mamaduke Mayhem! Gag Reel
• Puppy Marmaduke & Kitty Carlos: Home Movies
• BD-Live Enabled 

For a film I hated I admit to kind of liking the special features. The Gag Reel is actually halfway decent, while the Puppy Marmaduke & Kitty Carlos featurette is pretty darn amusing. All-in-all this is a nice set of extras, and if there are fans of this film out there (how that’s possible I’m not quite sure) they’re sure to be happy with what Fox has provided here.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Marmaduke is horrible and I can’t imagine anyone of almost any age enjoying it. That said, if you do, Fox has done an admirable job with this Blu-ray, and while I’m not about to recommend the thing that is certainly a point that deserves to be made all the same.