Boo Boo Kitty

My thoughts on The Garfield Movie

Although Garfield, the Jim Davis comic strip that is said to be the most widely-syndicated of all time, has been around almost as long as I have (and has proven to be infinitely more popular with the general public), I cannot say that I have been one who has contributed too much to its popularity during that time. Sure, I would read the daily adventures of the portly, sarcastic feline who loved lasagna, hated Mondays and who was the poster cat for sheer indolence in the Chicago Sun-Times (which actually dropped it early in its syndication run until reader complaints forced its return) but that was more due to the fact that I pretty much read every inch of the paper every day—even then, I preferred Bill the Cat, the hairball-spitting skewering of the character (and the attendant merchandizing) that turned up in the vastly funnier Bloom County. As for his incarnation as the subject of animated TV specials and his own Saturday morning series, that was pretty much entirely off my radar, though I will concede that utilizing the dulcet tones of Lorenzo Music to give voice to his musings was an inspired bit of casting. I did see the two CGI/live-action hybrid movies that were made, if only out of professional obligation, and while Bill Murray’s dry line readings may have inspired a laugh or two (though nothing as funny as Murray’s claims that the only reason he signed on to do them was because of a mistaken belief that Joel Coen was one of the screenwriters), I confess that I barely recall anything else about them other than the fact that they exist and that Jennifer Love Hewitt was somehow involved.

I mention all of this not as a way of establishing my sense of superiority over something whose only real crime was to bring a small dose of daily pleasure to its fans for nearly a half-century. What I am trying to do is establish the fact that, while I am certainly familiar with the character and his popularity, I would not describe myself as a fan by any stretch of the imagination. And yet, despite that, I still know enough to recognize that the very elements that made Garfield such a popular character in the first place—the way that his laziness and cynicism served as a counterpoint to the happy-go-lucky animals characters that populated other comic strips at the time—are barely discernible in The Garfield Movie, the latest attempt to transfer the character to the big screen, this time in a fully animated variation. Even the late Bob Barker would no doubt object to the way in which Garfield has been neutered here, removing nearly all of the traits that made him memorable in the first place in order to more easily surround him with the kind of blandly formulaic filmmaking that is more concerned with exploiting a familiar bit of IP and cramming in enough product placement to make the James Bond films seem restrained by comparison. This is a film that does for Garfield what Olive Garden (which receives a number of on-screen plugs during its running time) does for Italian food—offer up a vague simulacrum of something beloved that lacks any real flavor or distinction of its own.

At least the film has the common decency to be terrible right from the start instead of giving viewers any sense in the early going that it might be remotely decent. It kicks off with, of all things, a mawkish origin sequence in which the super-adorable kitten version of Garfield (Chris Pratt) is apparently abandoned in an alley by his father, Vic (Samuel L. Jackson) and then lured by the aromas wafting from a nearby Italian restaurant, where he is introduced to both lasagna and future owner Jon (Nicolas Hoult). When the story picks up, Garfield continues to live a life of semi-cheerful laziness with Jon and his dog, Odie (Harvey Guillen) that is broken up one night when he and Odie, off the raid the fridge late one night, are kidnapped by a pair of dogs, Roland (Brett Goldstein) and Nolan (Bowen Yang), who are working in the employ of a Siamese cat named Jinx (Hannah Waddingham). It turns out that snatching Garfield and Odie is merely a plot devised by Jinx in order to get Vic to come out of hiding in order to rescue his son and when Vic eventually turns up, her real plan can begin.

It seems that Jinx and Vic used to be partners in crime several years earleir until a botched heist at the Lactose Farms dairy ended with her getting thrown in the pound while he managed to escape scot-free. For revenge, she wants Vic, Garfield and Odie to break into Lactose Farms  once again and steal 1675 quarts of milk, one for each day of her imprisonment (a development I like to think is an affectionate, if misguided, homage to Rolling Thunder). With the aid of Otto (Ving Rhames), a bull that was cast away from the dairy and his cow love, EtheL (Alicia Grace Terrell), the three plot an elaborate heist that is constantly being threatened by the presence of a hard-ass animal control officer (Cecily Strong), the machinations of Jinx and Garfield’s deep-seated abandonment issues towards his father. No, I am not kidding about the thing with the lovelorn bull and cow, for the record.

I cannot rightly imagine what one’s legitimate expectations of the Platonic ideal of a Garfield movie could possibly debut I cannot imagine any actual fan looking at what is being offered up here and being satisfied with the results. The biggest and most inexplicable flaw is that there is never any sense that the people responsible for the film have ever even read the comic strip before, let alone have any solid grasp on the character’s appeal  For starters, this is a character who rarely even leaves the house, let alone become involved in anything that might be considered an “adventure,” so to see him getting involved in chases and intricate break-ins, dodging giant blades and proudly boasting that he, like Tom Cruise, does all of his own stunts, is just weird. Another weird change comes in regards to Garfield’s relationship with Odie. In the strip, Garfield is vaguely condescending towards the sweet-but-stupid dog but here, not only does he describe Odie as his best friend, Odie turns out to be arguably the smartest and most resourceful member of the gang. Frankly, Pete the Pup from the old Our Gang shorts demonstrated more edge than our feline hero is able to muster up here.

Again, I am not a Garfield purist by any stretch of the imagination and I do not necessarily have a problem with the idea of messing with the established formula here and there. My problem is that you never get any real sense of what director Mark Dindal and screenwriters Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgove and David Reynolds were hoping to accomplish with these changes. For nearly the entire running time, you just get the sense that the screenplay was originally written to be some kind of standalone animated film involving capers and parental issues that was recycled into a Garfield project without doing much of anything to change it around other than altering the names. If nothing else, this might offer some explanation as to why the ending of a film featuring Garfield devotes so much time and energy to the question of whether a bull and cow will be able to reunite and get busy, complete with a needle drop of “Let’s Get It On” for those who don’t quite get it. Maybe if they spent more time trying to understand the appeal of the character and less time trying to cram one blatant and unseemly commercial plug after another into the proceedings, they might have come up with something better than the second-rate tedium on display here.

The big problem with the idea of doing a Garfield film in the first place is that while the character is undeniably popular, the strip simply does not lend itself particularly well to feature-length storytelling—it is basically a joke strip with no real narrative spine of note. The previous attempts were able to mask this a little bit thanks to the invaluable presence of Murray (even if the funniest Garfield-related joke he would deliver turned out to be his immortal last line in Zombieland) but without him (Pratt is pretty much as he always is—amiable but mostly forgettable), the flaws in the concept are more glaring than ever. I’m not even sure who The Garfield Movie is even supposed to be for in the first place, other than the accountants over at Sony—older viewers who are familiar with the character will no doubt be annoyed with the changes while younger kids (if the ones at the screening that I attended are any baseline) are likely to be mildly distracted by the shenanigans at best and otherwise mostly bored. The whole thing is little more than a waste of time and energy on everyone’s part and while the combination of color, noise and action might prove to be enough to distract younger viewers for 90 minutes or so, anyone who yearns for a little more than that—yes, even in a Garfield movie—are likely to come away from it feeling both bored and disappointed.