Media Room: DVD & Blu-ray reviews

Marley & Me (Fox Home Entertainment, single-disc edition for $16.99; two-disc edition for $22.99; and three-disc Blu-ray edition for $25.99) — Twentieth Century Fox, the studio that gobbled up the movie rights for the best-seller “Marley & Me,” wanted director David Frankel to tell the story of the “world’s worst dog.”

But Mr. Frankel (“The Devil Wears Prada”) had little interest in making a movie about a crazy canine.

“I actually turned it down. They came to me three or four times” with the project, Mr. Frankel says. He finally relented when he saw a draft of the script that didn’t focus solely on stupid pet tricks.

“It was a movie about a marriage,” he says.

The scene that sold Mr. Frankel involved a necklace — and doggie doo. Owen Wilson, playing John Grogan, hoses down Marley’s waste to find a necklace the dog gulped down in the previous scene.

“This is not how I pictured my life,” the character mutters. Marriage, Mr. Frankel thought, is full of such unglamorous moments.

In an age when film marriages are often all about dysfunction, the movie shows a couple getting knocked down a few times but always getting back up.

“Marley & Me,” out on DVD Tuesday, also stars Jennifer Aniston as Jenny Grogan, the co-owner of the rambunctious yellow labrador retriever. The dog nearly wears out his welcome early on, but soon he becomes an integral part of the Grogan family.

The film made a mint during its late 2008 release — $142 million — but it was not without its critics. Some complained “Marley & Me,” although rated PG, was inappropriate for children due to a few very somber sequences.

“I’m a dad, so I try to objectively judge the movie as a parent,” Mr. Frankel says. But he argues that “Marley & Me” is about family life — and all its inherent complications.

“There’s a strange shying away from discussing mortality in America,” he says. “If kids get sad about death, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.” Families should discuss the difficult scenes in “Marley” together, he suggests.

The box office success from “Prada” and “Marley” hasn’t opened as many doors for Mr. Frankel as one might think.

“I’m struggling to make a comedy about bird watching. I’ve been nursing it for three years,” he says.

The director isn’t delusional about why people plunked down money to see his latest movie.

“The elements of dog comedy and dog slapstick that people were looking forward to seeing” brought them in, he says. “We included as many as we could.”

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