Marley and Me (2008) is a disappointment. First, it is not a comedy. Oh, yes, you may think it is because the post calls it a comedy, Internet Movie Database labels it “Comedy,” the stars Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston are usually seen in comedies, and the 2005 book was funny . . . but as James Berardinelli’s critic’s caption says, “Three hankies, minimum.” The ending had people in the theatre sobbing. Second, in the book Marley and Me, the author and his family learned lots of life lessons from having “the world’s worst dog,” but in the movie they put up with a dog that destroys their property. Worse, the emotional bond the family establishes with the crazy yellow Lab is taken for granted, but most people would not be able to stand such a dog. Third, while the whole point of Marley is that he is like no other dog, the family in the movie is the opposite—a cookie cutter Hollywood family. Thus, while the 22 dogs playing Marley age realistically, Wilson and Aniston look exactly the same at 40 as they did 15 years and three kids earlier. Finally, the ending to the movie—very different from the ending to the book—is so bad that the first thing I did when I got home from the cinema was to look up who wrote the screenplay--Scott Frank, a respected and successful Hollywood screenwriter who has written some good stuff (Dead Again; The Lookout) and done many respected adaptations of books (Out of Sight; Get Shorty). Well, he and his writing partner Don Roos blew it here! The movie ends with a long, protracted, three-plus hankie death—Marley slowing down, grinding to a halt, kids crying, parents distraught, and finally the long slow deathbed scene when the owner says good-bye to his old friend and the vet pumps in the lethal drug. The end. But the ending in real life and in the book is much better. After Marley dies, the family happens to see an ad in the paper one day for a rascally dog the owners cannot handle. It sounds like the dog has the same psychiatric problems Marley did, the same craziness, the same energy, the same irrepressible zest for life. It is profound—and profoundly happy—that Marley’s old family decides without hesitation to adopt the dog.