User:The Unlucky Locomotive/sandbox

Marmaduke is a 2022 computer-animated comedy film directed by Mark Dippé, and co-directed by Phil Nibbelink, Youngki Lee, and Matt Whelan, based on the comic strip of the same name by Paul and Brad Anderson. It is the second feature-length film based on the strip following the 2010 live-action film. The film stars Pete Davidson as the voice of Marmaduke, along with J. K. Simmons and David Koechner. It was released by SC Films in international countries and on Netflix in the United States on May 6, 2022. Marmaduke was universally panned by critics and audiences, with criticisms going towards its animation, screenplay, story, characters, and humor.

Why Should Marmaduke Learn His Lesson
Extremely poor grasp of source material: Within the whole result of the movie looks completely nothing like the original comic strip series, to the point where some people come to think that the live-action movie was less faithful than the animated version.

Development Hell: Netflix announced the movie in October 2017, it was originally supposed to be released around the second quarter of 2019 but was canceled due to Netflix making other projects during that time, and the infamous rise of COVID 19 that following year, giving it just two years to mature. However, the movie was indiscriminately pushed to a random release date, which turned out to be around early May 2022. After the movie came out on Netflix’s streaming platform, the animation studios and producers that worked on the movie ignored fixing the issues at all, resulting in that instead of a Netflix movie, it’s more of a Prime Video movie.


 * Unlike many animated movies of different franchises that had animated comic-based live-action movies, good or bad, still tried to be better than previous poorly received live-action movies, this movie decided to deviate, only for it to be even worse than the live-action movie.

The very idea of bringing Marmaduke back as an animated movie, although isn't that bad of an idea, it's not exceptional and isn't that completely necessary for those starters, probably because the infamous 2010 live-action movie has already tainted the franchise in such a bad light. What makes it more worse is that it was such botched timing for Netflix during that time, as the movie was released at a different time when the franchise was no longer relevant due to the fact that after the live-action movie’s poor reception a century ago, there was no signs of tv show nor specials that could at least hold up the popularity of the franchise and that Brad Anderson (the creator of Marmaduke) sended his last strip in 2015 before his death in August that year, making this movie rather forgettable.

Bad direction by Mark AZ Dippé, Phil Nibbelink, Youngki Lee & Matt Whelanl.

Similar to other animated movies such as Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, Rumble, The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, and Hotel Transylvania 4, another main issue with the movie is the pacing is way too fast, eventually for 88 minutes runtime, the pacing feels more like 58 minutes runtime, the whole plot makes it so difficult to follow at times, which makes the pacing awful, the movie is in fact, filled with unnecessary filler every now and then, making the plot of the movie bland and minimal.

The animation is such a ridiculous downgrade compared to Netflix’s other animated movies from previous years, for the most part, most of the visuals come off  be low quality, outdated, and very ugly, Also, The visuals honestly look more like a Xbox 360 game, or a PlayStation 3 game due to its issues with its textures. (Seriously? How lazy is that?).


 * Also with the textures, most of them, especially the grass, tree, and liquid textures all both look very lazy and off putting.
 * The 2D animation featured during the opening scene and end credits also turned out very ridiculous, and it doesn't help either that it was animated by the Disney veteran, Phil Nibbelink.
 * A prime example is during the ending credits, where after Marmaduke gets a smooch from Shantrelle, there is an assortment of floating hearts that can literally block most of the screen. It's as if the screenplay editors just knew that anyone, including kids, would just be spooked at a closeup of Marmaduke's eyes.


 * There are plenty of animation errors and low poly 3D models every now and then, a noticeable example is in the opening scene where Phil grills some sausages, burgers, and pork with some of them look like it's floating on top of the fire, even other 2022 animated movies such as Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, Hotel Transylvania 4, & Rumble didn’t have such noticeable animation errors like that.

Repulsive and unfitting character designs that don't look like their original counterparts from the comic strip series, For example, Marmaduke feels more like a bootleg of Scooby Doo, Also with Marmaduke, he is also inaccurately colored since in some posters, he has orange fur just like he had in the comic strip series, but he has a fawn like fur color instead.


 * On topic with the character designs, the human designs (including the Winslows) turned out very outdated for the worst as they look like Norm of The North character rejects, with their limbs and arms looking more like sticks as well as Dottie having such abnormally thick hips and legs.

Formulaic and mediocre writing where it is nothing but more but a typical movie about a dog participating in a competition, to the point that it becomes pretty predictable and that the viewer already knows that there will be a choice: will Marmaduke forever remain lazy or will eventually learn to be useful?

Some parts of the humor mostly consist of useless gross out (even though there is one during the middle of the movie) by far, if only not, like in the most infamous example is where Marmaduke defecates in the award cup, followed by a hazardous gas cloud that takes up the whole field and evacuates everyone, which is extremely disgusting!

Absolutely weak attempts at dialogue, for example:


 * "Ladies and gentlemen, one of the seven wonders of the world: Marmaduke!"
 * "Here comes EL STINKO!"
 * "Some dogs must be champions, others to be ... dogs."
 * "See ya later Zoser."

Most characters are just annoying, bland, or downright uninteresting:


 * Marmaduke himself who has been flanderized from a kind-hearted, clumsy, and always helpful Great Dane into a lazy, selfish, unruly, dim witted, and an overly accident-prone dog with a huge obsession on eating, although he is still likable.
 * The Winslows are just a generic family who always rely on Marmaduke.
 * Shantelle, a French poodle, is the stereotypical protagonist's love interest.


 * The other dogs that participated in the competition are kind of bland and they barely do anything in the entire movie, as well as being a stereotype of different countries, an example being an Mexican Chihuahua named Juan Pedro who is just obsessed with tacos.
 * Zeus, a Afghan Hound, while he can be somewhat amusing and tolerable as the main antagonist, he isn't the most intimidating and his motives to make Marmaduke can get bland since he's basically a selfish antagonist. As he gaslights and frames Marmaduke during his performance, making him eat a huge amount of food to make him gassy, sliding him on the shampoo to energetically injure Guy Hilton, he then becomes fallible because of his underhanded plans that fail. Plus, he barely has any screen time.

Most of the voice acting (except J.K. Simmons) is pretty poor for the most part:


 * Stunt Casting: Pete Davidson was a huge miscast as Marmaduke since there is no striking performance that fits him, and most of his voice comes off annoying. While another talented voice actor, Brian Hull, who happens to give off a very unremarkable voice performance as Guy despite his true talents.

Good Dog Qualities
Some of the characters are likable like King Tut (Carlos), Guy Hilton, and even Marmaduke, despite him being flanderized.


 * As discussed at Reason #5, Zeus is a tolerable villain.

Depending on your opinion, the soundtrack can be very fun to listen to, especially Marmaduke's rap song in the end credits.

The competition scenes were exciting and can be considered the only enjoyable scene throughout the movie, except the farting scene.

While most of the acting is janky, even J.K. Simmons is by far the best actor in the entire movie. He did his best to give Zeus' voice some life to his character with what he had to work with and his line delivery can be hilarious to listen to at times.

While the humor is beyond unfunny and cringeworthy, it has its funny moments here and there (this often happens unintentionally).


 * Zeus's snarky nature does provide many funny moments here and there.
 * This quote “That’s like me after Taco Tuesday”, was the only funny quote in the movie.

The very idea of an animated Marmaduke movie does sound decent on paper if they handled the concept a lot better.