Add director Tom Dey's dreadful live-action adaptation of the long-running comic strip to the pantheon of dog flicks that'll make you cry — for all the wrong reasons.
Voiced by the free-falling Owen Wilson, the Great Dane lopes between pseudo-hip smugness ("Who's lickin' butt now?") and saggy self-esteem as he tries to fit in at a new canine park. The cool "pedigrees" bully him; that fuels a tiresome identity crisis and a preference for the alpha pooch's vapid collie girlfriend (singer Stacy "Fergie" Ferguson) over the co-dependent Australian-shepherd "mutt" (Emma Stone).
In the process, many, many people get knocked over — among them, Marmaduke's organic-pet-food-exec owner (Lee Pace), who learns about "being a family" while plugging Petco. Crammed with more recycled offal than a can of Alpo, Marmaduke exults in fart jokes, offensive stereotypes (the cat, voiced by George Lopez, laps guacamole), and sloppy storytelling. Bad, bad dog.
