Marley & Me

David Frankel’s 2008 film follows John and Jenny Grogan, reporters who move to South Florida and take jobs at rival papers. The Labrador they get as a trial run before children proves untrainable, and John’s column about him takes off. Thirteen years of a miscarriage, three children and a move north run on one line. The book began the same way. The real Marley died at thirteen in 2003, Grogan wrote a column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the response was, in his words, “easily 25 times more than I had for any other column I wrote, on a good day”. Eleven of twelve agents had turned the book down. The mess on screen was planned. Twenty two yellow Labradors shared the part, the adult seen most often being Clyde, aged four. American Humane’s set report describes one puppy and one adult trained to chew objects and spit them out, lightweight props for anything knocked over, the beach run split so no puppy ran the distance, a trainer hidden in the back seat, and a taped tube and hidden pouch for the drip. A good fit if you can start on the wrecked furniture and let the film change register completely at the end. Not for anyone who would rather not watch an animal age and be put down.