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Marley & Me is so sugary and sweet that tickets should come with free toothpaste. It's also a film where nothing really happens. It's just a lot of...stuff.

The pic is based on newspaper columns by author John Grogan - columns about the everyday events of his life - and this is a film obsessed with the humdrum minutiae. Dog eats 'phone book; dog goes for a swim; dog takes a dump - like, big wow. It's a film version of someone saying 'Hey, a really HILARIOUS thing happened to me the other day' and you just switch off coz actually it's really dull. If Marley & Me is attempting to be zen-like in its minimalism then it fails by being so narcissistically obsessed with its own cuteness. I'm guessing it isn't though.

Owen Wilson and Jennier Aniston star. Their 'loveable kookiness' levels turned up to 11, but without any real impact. That's a real shock for Owen, so often awesome with his bewitching weirdness. Here he's just like Marley after visiting the vet's - without any testicles.

Occasionally the film hints that John (Owen) might be jealous of his wife's journalistic success and sad that his bachelor years are behind him. Those moments quickly pass, racing to a final 20 minutes that are so horribly schmaltzy, no manipulative sob story too low, they're perhaps the worst in cinema this year. Much of Marley & Me isn't really about anything but that finale rams home a vom-inducing message about All American, white, middle-class, two point four kids cosiness that should be consigned to hokey greetings card rather than polluting our multiplexes.

I left the cinema choking on a niceness overload, suffocated by what's basically 'Andrex Puppy: The Movie'.Ìý1 star.