Remember “Marmaduke,” aka Terrible Hollywood idea # 12 of 2009? (hey, it came relatively early in the year).
Lazy-voiced Owen Wilson — who is in serious need of career intervention, dude, you’re rich enough — will voice the title character in Fox’s comic strip adaptation, a live action/CGI blend in the style of the studio’s “Garfield.”
Oh, Christ. “Shanghai Noon” director Tom Dey shepherds a cast including Judy Greer and Lee Pace as Marmaduke’s owners, William H Macy as the villain, and the voices of Fergie, Emma Stone, George Lopez, Christopher Mintz-Plasse (kid, this makes sense you have a nerdy voice, but just remember you can’t act for shit), Steve Coogan and the Wayans Brothers. If you have kids, you might want to give them up for adoption before the movie’s release date in June next year.
Fine, it’s a kids movie and every actor is entitled to bring joy to brats. Hell, Bill Murray did “Garfield,” and no one batted an eyelash and yes, that’s fine. But following-up, the vanilla, puppy-dog movie (“Marley & Me”) with “Night at the Museum 2” and now this? Wilson sadly, feels like he’s tapped out his abilities onscreen. He essentially plays the same character over and over again. So the “Untitled James L. Brooks Project,” formerly titled, “How Do You Know?” with Reese Witherspoon and Paul Rudd, really cannot come fast enough. It remains to be seen if Wilson will do anything different in it, but presumably, a James L. Brooks project might save him from the usual dreck he takes (though, it’s a sort of sports, jocko script, really fucking long and we gave up on it months ago).
In other shitty talking animal movie news, Shawn Levy (“Night At The Museum”) will produce a big screen feature adaptation of “The Berenstain Bears” for Walden Media. Levy says “The comedy comes from this bear family coexisting in a more recognizably real world.” They’re bears, but they wear human clothes! HILARIOUS!