For the role of his wife, the studio suggested Aniston, but Frankel initially thought the actress would not be believable playing a woman from the age of 28 to her 40s. But upon meeting her, it took him two seconds to decide she was ``perfect.''

''And when she and Owen met, their chemistry was so charming, I knew this movie was going to be so easy,'' Frankel said.

Less easy was wrangling the 22 dogs it took to play Marley from puppydom to age 14. The bulk of Marley's scenes as a young adult, which take up two-thirds of the movie, were played by Clyde, a Labrador that Frankel says was trained to be rambunctious.

''The trainers could get him to do whatever we needed, but he's never been taught not to jump up on people or chew whatever he wants to chew,'' Frankel said. 'Basically, he's never been told `No.' He's crazily energetic, and Grogan testified he's the spitting image of the real Marley. The trick was that the actors had to be ready to go on take one, because Clyde was always was brilliant on the first take. But he would get easily bored after that.''

Many of the other dogs that played Marley were cast for their ability to do one specific trick, like howling at the window or circling around in the water. One older dog portrayed Marley as a senior.

Although the potential for melodrama in Marley & Me's last half-hour was enormous, Frankel says he tried hard to make sure he was never being invasive of the audience's feelings.

''Jen and Owen and I talked a lot about giving the movie sentiment but not making it sentimental,'' Frankel said. ``Owen himself is not a sentimental guy, which I think helps when you see someone like that feeling pain. It makes it more touching and powerful. The other thing was to not to underline any of the emotion with the camerawork and the music. I tried really hard never to hammer.''

Even though the real-life Marley's health deteriorated over the span of a couple of years, Frankel condensed the dog's aging to a couple of short moments in the film.

``This is a movie about a man who is now middle-aged and acknowledging -- not confronting, but acknowledging -- his own mortality. We all have to deal with the end of things. Hopefully the movie provides you with a lot of space to project elements of your own life into it. In that sense, the spareness of the story -- the simplicity of it -- is beautiful.

``The surprise audience for Prada was middle-aged men, who turned out in huge numbers. I think the same thing will happen here. In a way, the core target audience for Marley and Me is men in their 40s, because we are at that time in life where we've lost some dogs, and we know there are still more to lose, and we are hyper-aware of the need to celebrate each day.''

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