David Frankel directed The Devil Wears Prada. He has now made a movie that could be called The Dog Eats Prada as the labrador hero eats everything in sight, including an answering machine, carpets, sofas, flowers and the Thanksgiving turkey. He can destroy a whole garage on one of his better days.

Marley, sweet as a cut-price puppy, is bought by newlyweds Jennifer and John (Jennifer aniston and Owen Wilson), who only take him to a dog trainer (Kathleen Turner) when he has practically wrecked their first house. But she can't, or won't, do anything for him and he goes back home to ruin the place anew.

The anodyne couple don't get rid of him, however, though they do think about removing his capacity to mate. instead, they love him and, as three children come their way, he grows on them. But around a decade later the inevitable happens. While neither Wilson nor aniston betray any sign of ageing, Marley does and we know the adventure will probably end sadly.

The problem with Marley & Me, based on John Grogan's bestselling book, is not the outrageous dog - who at least shows signs of character (some 23 labradors were apparently used during the picture) - but the humans.

Wilson plays a journalist who wants to be a reporter but is made into a twice-weekly columnist on a Florida paper. He is so successful, often chuntering on about Marley, that he gets on a bigger paper somewhere else, which enables him to buy a huge house with all mod-cons and his wife to stop working and start breeding. Some paper!

So this becomes a story not so much about Marley as about a marriage and raising a family - though it is obviously better to have a dog when you are going through all this. and better for the film, too, since everything other than him seems blandly for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

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Frankel's direction is perfectly competent but also almost perfectly nondescript, even with alan arkin doing his grumpy shtick nicely as Wilson's first editor. Reading Wilson's comic column, he says without the trace of a smile: "This is absolutely hysterical!" But the film isn't, though the dog trainers have done wonders with less of a screenplay than the humans.