First Hit: This film couldn’t make up its mind; comedy or drama. In the end it was neither, just mediocre.
OK, I wanted fluff and this is what I got, sort of. The premise was good and maybe with a different male lead it might have found legs as a drama piece because the basic storyline could have worked.
Jennifer Aniston (playing Jennifer Grogan) plays a driven feature news writer who has a plan for her life. Her counterpart is Owen Wilson (playing John Grogan) who is a struggling reporter but always seems to come through in a pinch.
As part of their life plan, they decide a dog will spice up their life a bit and when they go to pick a dog they pick the “clearance sale” dog, the runt that no one else will want. This dog happens to be incorrigible. There are so many scenes of this dog knocking over something, dragging someone and over eating that it becomes tedious and boring.
This is the films downfall because underlying all this is really a story about how marriage and doing the full family plan can take its toll on a couple and how this dog holds it all together. But the dog is too much the character to make it all work well together.
Owen would have been a good fit if it was more of a comedy about a man and his goofy dog, but the underlying story had a different tone and it felt like Owen was going to crack a joke at any inappropriate moment just because he has this smirk view of life.
Overall: This was a confused film with some funny and serious good bits but they never coalesced into something wholly good.