‘The Garfield Movie’ Review: A True Cat-astrophe
Everyone’s least favorite gluttonous orange cat has once again lumbered back to the box office to torture unsuspecting audiences in mass. His last strike was in 2006 with the truly abysmal A Tale of Two Kitties. It took filmgoers nearly two decades to let our guard down, and the Garf wasted no time in taking his revenge. The Garfield Movie is another miss for the orange cat and his crew; an odd, mistimed misfire that aims at the closest target around every corner, playing it safe to the most stringent degree. Despite the financial success, this one wasn’t ready for release, and certainly doesn’t warrant a revisit in the form of any sort of sequel or follow-up.
The movie feels like a Monday on a never ending loop. To be based on something so simple as a tubby cat who loves lasagna and hates the first day of the work week, The Garfield Movie is needlessly complicated on the narrative front. From overlong opening flashbacks to extended training sequences that border on accidental parody, the film just never finds a footing on anything but obvious uncertainty.
The lack of a clear, driven vision here is painful. Again, it feels like a product, engineered in a lab to guarantee casual success. But as is the case with most projects like that, regardless of numbers, this one ends up feeling completely listless. This aspect is worsened with the overwhelming focus on comedy. On a basic level, that makes sense for a Garfield movie aimed at kids, but the same kids have heard pretty much every single joke and comedic offering on display here, and likely in something far better.
There are a few moments where the film loosens up a little bit and is able to use the character archetypes to drum up something fun/funny (the roadkill bit specifically comes to mind). Most everything that works here works as a result of the ever-living allure that these characters have maintained since conception. Even considering the failure of the films, Garfield has seen some great moments on the small screen throughout multiple shows that serialized his shenanigans and capitalized on the more stripped down benefits of the character(s).
To that point, the strongest shoulder to lean on for comic relief here is Odie, the silent dog. His visual gags and general goofiness go a long way in distracting from the breathy diatribes between Chris Pratt and Samuel L. Jackson (neither of whom are to be blamed) that the film tries to pass off as comedy. Odie is a character that you can’t overcomplicate, and thankfully, he’s one of the few things that the filmmakers leave alone here. Thus, he’s a huge highlight. Maybe we’ll get an Odie spinoff.
Circling back a bit, all the voice acting is an expected win. Other than Snoop Dogg’s playing a cat feeling a little sacrilegious, the whole cast does more with the screenplay and other lackluster blobs of clay than you could really ask of them. Chris Pratt proved with Mario that he could helm an animated film, and he’s furthering his case here, even with the little he has to work with. Jackson is solid in his supporting role, and Nicholas Hoult is hysterically pitiful as John in the most calculated way possible.
More points where they’re due, the film looks compelling, even if that comes down to expenses. The budget may not be extravagant in this case, but a great portion of it clearly went to the visual palette that the film sports proudly.
Colors are splayed honestly and often, exaggerated to push a setting or theme. For kids especially, there’s a whole lot to look at here; enough to get lost in, even. The Garfield Movie puts a heavy focus on this aspect, in addition to plenty of wild sound effects and visual goofs to tie into the whole thing.
The final battle, if you can call it that, is an eye-popping mashup of high-tech cat fights. There are lasers and flashing lights about, and even if it becomes a bit much, the film obviously put a lot of stock in this sequence, and really this portion of the film on the whole, and it paid off. Everything looks as good as it should.
But you just can’t polish a turd, and where Garfield loses its ninth life is in the forced emotional plot line between the titular cat and his father Vic, Sam Jackson’s character.
The film attempts to forge an arc between the two, making blisteringly unsubtle efforts to tie plot points in and push a sense of familiar emotion. But the former quality, familiarity, sinks the thing before it can even get off the ground.
It’s the whole “misunderstood” trope, where a character is perceived as bad until a particular detail is revealed to the audience that subverts the knowledge and flips and the perception. This is overdone for a reason, and can be executed well, but Garfield plays this off with the same one-note fluffiness that it does everything else, and renders the impact essentially nonexistent as a result.
This not only breaks the heart of the film, but slices the stakes into pieces by the time they’re supposed to come into play. What follows is a weightless, drawn out third act that pushes this runtime to 100 minutes for no reason other than to squeeze in more brand deals (of which there are an obscene amount).
Unless you’re just a full-on superfan of the lazy tabby himself, The Garfield Movie is unlikely to work for anyone over the age of four. It’s weirdly slow, terribly mundane, and uninteresting the entire way through. The sound technicality and effortful performances on hand do little to advance the film’s case towards decency, though they do bolster the basic watchability. You can get through this, especially if you have kids, but don’t brave these plains alone. The Garfield Movie is one of the most do-nothing efforts of the year thus far.
But if you like your food flavorless, being bored to death, or any of the massive corporate machines that run our lives, you’re in for the ride of your life.