You Me and Marley [DVD]

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When they tried to take Marley to get neutered, he tried to escape the car onto a busy road, almost getting him roadkilled. When John senses Jenny is contemplating motherhood, his friend and co-worker, Sebastian Tunney, suggests adopting a dog to test their readiness to raise a family. Animated and emotionally accessible, Aniston comes off better here than in most of her feature films, and Wilson spars well with her, even if, in the film's weaker moments, he shows he's on less certain ground with earnest material than he is with straight-faced impertinence.

Meanwhile, Jenny announces that she's pregnant, and their family drama unfolds in its tragicomic glory.A group of bored Roman Catholic teens from Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, steal cars and joyride around the city, causing havoc among the nearby Protestants and local Irish Republican Army members. Initially stumped for ideas, John realizes that Marley's misadventures might be the perfect topic for his first column.

As a result, Sectarianism means little to them and they are truly one for all and all for one in their little band of revellers which includes the titular trio; the runtish Sean, known as 'Wart', who has lost family to the Troubles, the accident prone, short sighted Marley, and the fiercely intelligent, feisty Frances each played by Marc O'Shea, Michael Liebmann and Bronagh Gallagher. When Jenny starts talking about a family, John asks his bachelor friend Sebastian (Eric Dane) for advice on how to distract her. I haven't seen it since but it contained enough violence and car chase / crash action to stay in the mind of an 18 year old. After a year, he grows into a big dog and soon proves to be incorrigible, forcing John and Jenny to enroll him in a dog obedience program run by a woman named Ms.

And though Wilson and Aniston take a little while to hit their stride as a couple, overall the movie is a pretty seamless depiction of the arc of family life. Like many disruptive youth, they find themselves bored, sick and jaded of the small world around them, even when that world is as brutal and corrupt as Northern Ireland. The film's score was composed by Theodore Shapiro, who previously had worked with director Frankel on The Devil Wears Prada. Though no sexual activity is explicitly shown, it's implied, especially in a creaky bed at an Irish inn. And in the cinema, all of us tough, cynical critics had tears welling in our eyes, swallowing hard; our lips, so often curled in a cheap sneer, were now trembling, because of the same desperately sad thought: "Owen Wilson used to be really good .