It's almost summer movie season...

This article kind of annoys me.

Not because it has the gall to suggest that Marmaduke might not be considered the comic strip equivalent of Shakespeare... but because it's becoming increasingly clear to me that I might be the only person in the world that likes Marmaduke.

So it's not like I actively seek out Marmaduke first thing in the morning, but whenever I have the comics in my hand and whenever the comics page is blessed with the strip, I read it. And enjoy it. It's not particularly well drawn, it isn't humorous or filled with keen observations or anything. It's just an old guy making a strip about a big dog in about a minute and then collecting his paycheck. And because of that tossed-off quality the strip possesses... it somehow endears itself to me. Cause, you know... just about all comic strips play it safe, recycling old tropes over and over again because it can get away with it. And Marmaduke makes that painfully obvious... and I like that.

Thus, I am excited for the Marmaduke movie, even though no one else in the world is.



I'm trying really hard to adequately convey why exactly I want to see this by using examples from the trailer... but I can't. I mean, I know it's going to suck. It takes the franchise and decides that what it needs is a "dog high school." It features a dog dance routine. Which doesn't exactly fit the "dated by 50 years" modus operandi of the comic strip, but it keeps with the lazy spirit of the strip by hiring hack Hollywood screenwriters to produce a lazy talking-animal family movie. Plus it has William H. Macy in what will probably be his finest role since Fargo. Or something.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that it's Marmaduke. And I have to see it.

I might buy a ticket for a different movie, and then sneak into the Marmaduke showing in a dark hoodie or something.... but still, it is something that I have to do.