'The Garfield Movie' Review: Meow-diocre
It’s been nearly 20 years since the universally despised CG live-action Garfield: The Movie starring Bill "Doesn't know how to spell Cohen" Murray as the voice of the iconic feline. It was so bad even Breckin Meyer (who played Jon in the film) dunked on it in episodes of Robot Chicken. A better Garfield flick, preferably CG-3D animated, was long overdue. Yet The Garfield Movie arrives uninspired, as if it was commissioned by an exec who saw Illumination's financial success with The Secret Life of Pets, wanted a piece of that pie, and found that the only IP he could utilize was Garfield.
Image copyright (©) Courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing
PG: Action/peril and mild thematic elements.
Runtime: 1 Hr and 41 Minutes
Production Companies: Columbia Pictures, Alcon Entertainment, DNEG Animation, One Cool Group, Wayfarer Studios, Stage 6 Films, Andrews McMeel Entertainment
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Director: Mark Dindal
Writers: Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgove, David Reynolds
Cast: Chris Pratt, Samuel L. Jackson, Hannah Waddingham, Ving Rhames, Nicholas Hoult, Cecily Strong, Harvey Guillén, Brett Goldstein, Bowen Yang, Snoop Dogg
Release Date: May 24, 2024
Only In Theaters
Garfield (Chris Pratt) lives life large as a coddled indoor cat with his best friend, "unpaid intern" dog-bro Odie (Harvey Guillén, continuing his dog-voicing streak after Strays and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish) to architect Jon Arbuckle (Nicholas Hoult). He enjoys being pampered by Jon, watching cat videos on "Catflix," and ordering endless takeouts with drone delivery food service. His (and Odie's) good times are upended when Garfield's deadbeat, street-smart, thieving dad, Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), who abandoned him as a kitten, gets him unexpectedly involved in a crime plot. He must infiltrate a farm/theme park, Lactose Farms, and steal over 1,000 gallons of milk to pay back his old gang member, Jinx (Hannah Waddingham) for the year she spent at the pound after a job gone wrong. But to get into Lactose Farms, Vic and Garfield need the help of the brand's bull mascot, Otto (Ving Rhames), who agrees to guide them through the heist if they rescue his cow significant other, Ethel (Alicia Grace Turrell).
Hollywood's obsession with having Chris Pratt voice every iconic character in family animation has been alarming, if not hilarious. The news of him voicing Garfield arriving a few weeks after his Mario announcement had me questioning reality. Yet, I might have to eat my words because I see the vision in his voice performance, more or less. While many generations associate that orange tabby voice with one of an older man, Garfield's traits have always been equivalent to a man-child. While best known for his lazy, acidic nature, he always had a youthful, energetic spirit with wild expressions. Granted, his voice actors of yore, Frank Welker and Bill Murray, were different takes on the originator Lorenzo Music (whom the film honors in a great background visual). Pratt takes Garfield in a fresh direction that still captures the character's persona in all his sarcastic, sardonic nature – sounding like a young Murray in his deadpanned line deliveries – while providing a resounding kid-like feel. After all those years of Zoloft Garfield, sounding the way we know and love him, Pratt is like Garfield when he changes his prescription to Adderall. It's worth noting that Mark Dindal sought him out because of his portrayal of Andy Dwyer in Parks and Recreation.
Since this is a heavy “daddy issues” movie, like most Chris Pratt movies, his take nicely contrasts Samuel L. Jackson's slickness, lending to some solid "I hate you, dad, you ruined my life" banter. To my surprise, The Garfield Movie benefits from heartfelt moments between Vic and Garfield that admittedly got me choked up and missing my late dad – who had a similar build to Vic too. I didn't expect a Garfield story to gut-punch me in those areas, but here we are.
The animators at London-based studio DNEG Animation craft a cartoonish world stripped out of Jim Davis' panels, similar to how Blue Sky's The Peanuts Movie translated Charles M. Schulz's strips to a cinematic CG aesthetic without the extra effort of experimental frame rates and line work. All the character designs, facial expressions, and mouth movements embody Davis' signature style while looking a cut above Garfield's previous CG outputs on TV. Also, it’s undoubtedly better than that yucky hairball of a 2004 flick. It embraces a welcoming, slapstick flair that only exists in Illumination movies these days, considering that even Looney Tunes' deadbeat daddy, WB, refuses to distribute Looney Tunes movies. The slapstick comedy generates genuine laughs with vet Mark Dindal (The Emperor's New Groove, Cats Don't Dance) at the helm.
There's a labor of love in honoring Garfield's history in the background, for the film is full of great Easter eggs, beginning from the first few frames as Garfield unlocks his phone screen with his passcode being 1978, the year the comic strips debuted. Not that a series of Easter eggs make up a movie (Cc: Ghostbusters post-2016) but small details like that integrated across the movie scratched a satisfying itch that made my Garfield-loving self purr. If only the Garf had been deployed in a story better suited for his lazy spirit.
I don't particularly appreciate calling movies out as cash grabs these days. I've turned a new leaf and have become a “glass half-full” critic. That said, there's no way of avoiding the thought that this movie solely exists to grab that green kibble from the kiddies who loved The Secret Life of Pets. For some reason, The Garfield Movie deploys Garfield in a convoluted, unappealing heist plot that feels like it was made up on the spot.
Dindal, the animators, and, to an extent, Chris Pratt understand the character's appeal. Yet, the screenplay by Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgove, and David Reynolds doesn’t fit the character. The father-son feline adventure adds new characters to Garfield's contained, weird world, most uninteresting outside of their designs – the one-note villain Jinx and her henchmen Roland (Brett Goldstein) and Nolan (Bowen Yang). This origin-focused tale with its myriad objectives could've been a Secrets Life of Pets plot and no one would've blinked at it. Jon gets it the worst, for the film benches him for a thankless gag that belittles the fact that Nicholas Hoult voices him.
As one of the few family films in an industry that doesn't want to release kids' movies anymore, kids won't mind the weird MCU-like muted color palette and the occasional slapstick gag. And it doesn't necessarily have anything to anger you like terrible, pop-heavy music cues. The worst offering is three separate Tom Cruise references and the blatant product placements throughout. Yet nothing compares to the generic and weirdly structured story.
While Garfield has seen worse Mondays cinematically, the lasagna-loving cat's latest movie can't claw its way out of mediocrity, even with the efforts of animation legend Mark Dindal at the helm.
Rating: 2.5/5 | 51%
