Marley and Me , Yes Man , Bolt

Micro-Reviews by Loc

This is what happens when you’re trapped on a plane and you didn’t see many movies in the fall. You begrudgingly watch a bunch of flicks as you’re flying over a large body of water. You don’t stop it, cause the movies are free, but you do hate yourself a little because you know you’re dying a little bit. So these will get the short-but-sweet treatment.


1) Marley and Me: maybe it works for the dog-owners out there, but this flick didn’t work for me. With no exaggeration, this is two hours of random scenes where Owen Wilson and/or Jennifer Anniston are interrupted by a crazy-ass dog doing something that an untrained dog would do. Like the time when Owen leaves to pick up Jen from the airport, and the dog destroys the garage. Or the time when Owen lets the dog off the leash, and it craps in the beach. Or the time when Jen is having a stressful day and the dog knocks over one of her kids.
If that sounds weird and stunted, repeat this for two hours and you have yourself Marley and Me. It’s like snapshots of Owen and Jen not getting old, but pretending by having kids and aging them in every scene that follows. And you have Marley wrecking shit. That’s what I would have named this: Marley Wrecks Shit.

The only decent part of the movie comes near the conclusion, as things come to a head with Marley. The filmmakers finally decided to give you a bit of story to go along with the other hour-and-a-half of wrecking shit scenes. Blah, not worth the time over the Pacific Ocean. Out of 7 dog years, Marley and Men scuttles around with 3 years. Put it to sleep.


2) Yes Man: Jim Carey’s return to the basic comedy. Imagine a sequel to Liar Liar, where instead of forcing Jim Carey to tell the truth, you force him to say yes to any question or offer. And that’s the gist of this flick.

It’s actually a very decent, average flick. Zooey Deschanel is profoundly OK in her lead role, but having seen very little of her before, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. But she does an excellent job of being the sweet foil to Jim’s decent shmo.

It is what it is. There’s the set-up, then the hook, then the rewards, then the missed rewards due to complicated circumstances, then remorse, and eventual resolution. It’s a formula, but it works OK here. Out of a $6000 micro loan, Yes Man hits a decent groove at $4000.


3) Bolt: Disney still makes animated flicks that aren’t from the brains at Pixar. Luckily for us, John Lasseter oversees all of Disney animation, so even if it’s not Pixar, it’s got some Pixar fingerprints on it. Bolt is a computer animation feature starring John Travolta and Miley Cyrus.
The basic premise revolves around Bolt, a TV-star dog that doesn’t know he’s a TV star.

Rescued as a puppy, he was made to believe he inhabits the spy-world of the show he stars in with Cyrus. So what happens then he accidentally gets shipped across the country while thinking Cyrus was kidnapped by the show’s villains? Fun you would hope.

More than anything, you get bland stuff. The animation does look slick, and I bet the 3D version was pretty nice to watch. But the story is pretty mundane and action just drags on. The Pixar-prints come as the story tries to develop more depth to all the characters, like the cat and hamster that Bolt picks up along the way, and it succeeds to a point. But it’s not too engaging. Out of the 3000 mile cross-country trip, Bolt gets stuck at 1500 miles. Mediocre.