It all begins for the Grogans after a freak spring snow dusts their Michigan wedding, sending John and Jen packing for the warmer climes of West Palm Beach, Fla., where they arrive to the strains of R.E.M's "Shiny Happy People." In other words, disillusionment and disappointment are sure to follow.
An aspiring journalist with Watergate-case-cracking dreams, John agrees, reluctantly, to write a local column for the paper. Jen's a journalist too, serious and by all accounts successful, but we don't see much of that -- it's really not her movie.
With a column Grogan doesn't really want and Jen making noises about having a family, something between ambivalence and panic sets in. Enter Marley, the puppy that best friend Sebastian -- Eric Dane doing a slight variation of his weekly McSteamy on "Grey's Anatomy," more hair, still on the make -- promises will slow the tick, tick, tick of Jen's biological clock.
The puppy and the couple meet cute, there are blindfolds involved, and the Grogans' very organized world starts coming apart in bits and pieces, literally. The Lab chews and tears through everything, but a close-up of those liquid brown eyes and, well, all is forgiven. You know Frankel is working overtime to hit every emotional note possible when even a pooped-mango scene is designed to elicit a chorus of "ahhs."
Then there is Wilson -- a Lab of an actor with that shock of yellow-gold hair and gentle good nature. But instead of the forever frat boy of "Wedding Crashers" or the surfer dropout of "You, Me and Dupree," he's that guy's solid friend, the one who married his longtime sweetheart, got a job, had a family and feels guilty about any regrets. You've always been able to sense the underlying vulnerability in his characters, but he's a bit more wounded here, and it becomes him.
Aniston is comfortable in Jen's skin, though she's always better in smaller, intimate ensembles than oversized films like "Marley & Me." Still, there's an ease between Wilson and Aniston from the first frame -- they seem like good friends who've been married for years, which is a problem. At one point, after they're comfortably settled with three babies on board, Jen asks: Where are those sexy people we once were? Where were they ever, I wonder? You won't find them in this movie.
