What The Success Of 'Marley & Me' May Mean For Our Collective Moviegoing Future

You may have heard there are a few problems with the economy.

Because many people's lives have only begun to be directly affected in the last couple of months, it's been difficult to tell what effect, if any, the grim national mood would have on popular entertainment. It's a Hollywood article of faith that movies are "recession-proof," in part because people seek out escapist entertainment when they're troubled — an belief arising primarily from the eagerness with which Americans continued to go to the movies during the Great Depression.

But the Great Depression didn't have Netflix, Blockbuster, HBO, movies on demand, or digital thievery, all of which are highly convenient and wildly less expensive ways to enjoy a movie than going to the theater. (I am not advocating digital thievery, you understand; only acknowledging that it exists.)

As a matter of fact, the Great Depression didn't have television, and if your desire is for escapism and you have cable, you probably have a hundred channels of it already. For a variety of reasons, making predictions based on what happened during the Great Depression seems like a dicey proposition. Still, whatever effect the economic situation has on how much we go to the movies, the increasing sense that the news consists of a series of stories about how much dread it is appropriate to feel today may well affect which movies do well.

Enter Marley & Me.

Why this may be the dawning of the age of the inoffensive, after the jump...

Marley & Me opened on Christmas Day, and it made about $50 million in its first four days. That's a pretty big splash for something that isn't a kids' movie, a comic-book movie or something else with an obvious cult (hello, High School Musical 3 and Twilight), or an action-packed blockbuster. It's essentially a warm, squishy family film pitched for adults, and that hasn't necessarily been a huge box-office draw recently. I've been trying to remember the last similarly-themed movie to open with this kind of strength, and I haven't been able to (perhaps you can, in the comments).

When I saw Marley & Me, the thing I felt most acutely was how easy to watch it was, and I don't mean that as either an insult or a compliment, necessarily. Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson, who play the owners of Marley the yellow lab, are overwhelmingly personable and genial in it for the most part. They're mostly happy, they're mostly going about their business, and it's a fair criticism of the movie — best explained by Scott Tobias at the A.V. Club — that its biggest challenge is overcoming the sense that it could be called Highly Attractive Couple Has Regular Life With Dog.

It feels like a perfect story for unhappy times; it really does. It's funny but not cutting, it's not trying to teach you anything, and it's not there to make you think anything other than, possibly, "I really love my dog." You may cry, but only over the normal progression of dog ownership.

One movie is not a trend, but if you're looking for a hint of what recession-era successes may look like in popular culture, this is probably one. I saw it, I enjoyed it, and then I forgot it. It was pleasant to watch, but sort of in the same way tea is good when you're sick.

I wouldn't at all recommend a movie diet made up entirely of movies like this. I saw Doubt on the same day, and it goes without saying (I hope) that it's infinitely more rewarding and interesting as art. (With the exception of Meryl Streep, whose performance has divided critics into two camps called "She Was Amazing" and "She Was Chewing So Much Scenery I Expected Her Teeth To Be Worn To Nubs By The End," and I am emphatically in the second.) (But I digress.)

But I will give Marley & Me credit for an honest portrayal of dog ownership by adults, which hasn't been covered as thoroughly in movies as dog ownership by moppets or ornery old cranks. Having a dog really is often hilarious and crazy-making and it really does end in tears, so in that sense, there's nothing unfair about the film's approach.

If we find ourselves charging headfirst into an era of huge money for what's warm and inoffensive, you can peg the beginning of that era to Christmas Day and the opening of Marley & Me. And you can, as it is so often reasonable to do, blame the dog.