Garfield was one of my favorite comic strips growing up. It was one of the first titles I read consistently, especially by going to the library and checking out the strip collections, as there were a good amount of years in by the time I was reading comics as a young kid. I was at the right age as Jim Davis exploited his creation to the mainstream with all the CBS primetime specials. Kids today, and even many younger adults, don’t know how special it was to see cartoons on broadcast network television compared to the post-The Simpsons and later Cartoon Network world of always-on cartoons. I loved the cartoon Garfield and Friends, which was on six days a week. That’s what I think of when I think of Garfield, especially with Lorenzo Music as the authentic and best voice of the character. As time passed, I stopped caring about Garfield and didn’t want to see Bill Murray voice the character. After all these years, I thought I’d take a shot at this new version in the theaters. Now voiced by Chris Pratt, who I feel is the most hated on celebrity voice actor I’ve ever seen, I was going in with my expectations low. Even with low expectations, they probably should’ve been a bit lower.
So, this movie is a bit of a reintroduction of the character, and it is a story that has never been told about Garfield before. Here, Garfield tells us how he met Jon (Nicholas Hoult) and became the cat we know in a few minutes. We’ve seen that told before, but this movie is focused on Garfield meeting his long lost father Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), an outdoor street cat (reminiscent of the other orange comic strip cat Heathcliff), and this crazy adventure they go on after being kidnapped by an evil white Persian cat named Jinx (Hannah Waddingham). Garfield, Vic, and Odie (Harvey Guillén) meet a bull named Otto who wants to save his beloved cow wife from an evil dairy corporation. Jon spends the movie trying to find Garfield and Odie. Also, no other classic Garfield supporting characters are in the story.
So I’ll start with what I liked. While the film won’t wow you with its visual aesthetic I did like how the fur was treated on the characters. They look like my memories of how Garfield plush toys looked in the 1990s. The fur looked soft and fuzzy, the eyes were shiny, and the characters had a good weight. The silhouettes for the new characters fit Garfield, and it is easy to make sense of who they are, along with good character in how they move. There were some good gags here and there, especially with Odie. Now, with what I didn’t like – this film has too much product placement. It has so much product placement that this film couldn’t flop if it tried. It smacks you with Olive Garden, WalMart, Netflix, and more. How can this not make money? It leads to what I feel is why I stopped caring about Garfield and how it just became the same thing over and over. Then you find out Jim Davis doesn’t draw his own strip and that this cartoon cat is just a tool to sell merchandise. While that is the American way, it hurts how this movie can even tell a story, no matter how hard the filmmakers try.
The story is very convoluted, along with a ton of gags that didn’t work much, but they throw so many jokes that it doesn’t leave time for you to enjoy the ones that work. The second part of the movie also just feels like a joke on the fact that Ving Rhames voices Otto the bull. The movie becomes Garfield Mission: Impossible and does something that feels out of place for these characters. The dynamic between Garfield and Odie was very different for me as Odie was like a manservant for Garfield and not the lovable annoyance he’s historically been. The film has some dark things happen that feel out of place with the tone. The Garfield Movie is an overstuffed and not funny enough animated film that might work for some of the youngest children but might feel like a waste of time for most. They need to go back to what made Garfield work in the peak years, not product commercials.
Score: C-
