Big fat hairy deal.
I guess Garfield is so fat that his collar and tag has been hidden under his fur this whole time. I guess this is a cartoon, so we’re not supposed to question how his old man Vic, who is bigger than him, can squeeze through a small vent opening, but Garfield can’t. And since this is a cartoon, Garfield can use his owner Jon Arbuckle’s credit card to order drones to deliver him pizzas, a new sofa, and a Catflix account without any repos and deactivations. Just a pricy delivery bill.
“The Garfield Movie” is the latest cartoon-to-movie job to get a reboot following their live action adaptations, after “Smurfs: The Lost Village,” “Scoob,” and “The Adams Family.” There are some good ideas here, but it still lacks the kind of sarcasm that permeated the feline’s comedy.
Garfield (voiced by Chris Pratt), as most of you know, is Jim Davis’ comic strip creation-the fat, lazy, lasagna-loving cat, who hates Mondays, raisins, and the obnoxiously cute kitten Nermal. He also has a dog roommate Odie (voiced by Harvey Guillen) and acts like he runs the house, which is why he tells the audience: “And that’s how I adopted Jon.”
Pratt said he enjoyed voicing Garfield, but I don’t think he creates a very convincing voice as him. He’s the latest movie star to voice him after Bill Murray 20 years ago, but the one Garfield voice actor who will always stand out is Lorenzo Music, who knew how to apply the sarcasm and pop culture jokes in him. I’ve enjoyed him in the TV specials and the “Garfield & Friends” series.
And I’m not a fan of Nicholas Hoult sounding unrecognizable as Jon. But the supporting voice cast is often entertaining. There’s Samuel L. Jackson as Garfield’s dad Vic (the one I’ve mentioned in the first paragraph), who reunites with him after all these years. So, instead of reuniting with his mom like in the comic strips and TV special “Garfield on the Town,” why not introduce us to his old man? And why not give them a plot where they owe Vic’s old partner-in-crime Jinx (voiced by Hannah Waddington) a substantial amount of milk?
Their heist has her two dog henchmen-the Shar Pei Roland (voiced by Brett Goldstein) and the whippet Nolan (voiced by Bowen Yang)-on their tails, and a romantically disgruntled mascot bull named Otto (Ving Rhames) playing Danny Ocean.
One of the few bright ideas of the film is when the animal catcher (voiced by Cecily Strong) has an app that can translate animal noises. If you ask me, there should be an app of that kind, because I’ve grown weary of the cliche that the humans and animals can’t understand each other. And every once in a while in the original 80s-90s cartoons, the humans were able to understand Garfield. So, maybe the movie wants to tell off the cliche I dislike.
“The Garfield Movie” is the first film director Mark Dindal has made in less than 20 years since “Chicken Little.” I was really looking for his return to the big screen, because of how I was delighted by his first two movies “Cats Don’t Dance” and “The Emperor’s New Groove.” I think the director is showing a throwback on those two movies without being so obvious, and I suppose his new film should be about the comic strip feline, based on his choice of wise-cracking comedy. But what he’s missing is elevation.
This movie doesn’t compare to how Garfield faced a panther in “Garfield in the Rough,” reunited with his mom, or beat Nermal in a cat show on “Garfield & Friends.” But at least it isn’t live action, and it does feature a comic strip in the form we all know and love.
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