-Caleb Gunn
Gunn’s Garage: Garfield: The Movie: Review
What’s to come…
Although this film throws the orange tabby back into the limelight, the cat and his producers at “Alcom Entertainment” will soon learn audiences don’t care to view nine different lives of Garfield, each more poorly created in the form of movie reboots or shows, hoping to make this outdated character into a modern-day success. Everything in this film, from the poor storytelling, flat humor, repetitive slapstick, food gags, and cringey ad-placement all show this wasn’t made for Garfield fans (God bless their souls), but instead to make a quick buck off parents who bring their children to theatres for something to do.
Story Summary
When lazy orange tabby cat, Garfield (although certainly not as lazy as depicted in the comics, more so of an obsessive eater in this film), is living the “good life” with access to as much food and comfortable living as he pleases, his life is turned upside down when he and his best friend, Odie, are unexpectedly kidnapped and taken hostage. However, when a mysterious figure appears to save him and Odie, their savior is revealed to be his absent father, Vic, who then bumps into the movie’s antagonist, Jinx, who demands Garfield and Vic to steal an unreasonable amount of milk from a factory as revenge towards Vic for leaving her to be taken by the pound years back. Garfield, Vic, and Odie then embark on an adventure to retrieve the milk, only to work out their father and son issues (in a very forcefully written manner), and in the end they overthrow Jinx’s demands, Vic moves into the house and the two tabby cats and dog now live comfortably together with as much access to lasagna and drone delivery as they please, the end.
Pros and Cons:
PRO: The animation is fairly nice to watch and is nicely detailed on the characters, with nearly every strand of hair being visible of Garfield and Vic in multiple shots. The character’s designs are also pretty accurate to their original looks from the comics (although films like The Peanuts Movie (2015) and Captain Underpants (2017) do a much better job at incorporating the similar art style alongside a world/visual effects which match their series).
CON: Garfield’s personality really doesn’t match up with his depicted in the comics. Garfield is seen as a lot more energetic, spunky, but still sarcastic throughout the film, with constant, never-ending narration to the audience. The unfunny fourth-wall breaks get dull quickly and only feel like speed bumps in the weightless story.
PRO: Odie is a good boy throughout the entire film.
CON: The chemistry and writing of Garfield’s and Vic’s internal struggle as Garfield was abandoned at a young age features very weak tension and terrible writing. Many of their issues are solved through jokes, such as when they are untied from the tree when their relationship has apparently “made enough progress” and should be able to work together as a team now. Never straight up tell the audience the development and emotions of the characters, not even the children are that dull to not realize what’s happening.
PRO: Although the joke is ruined by Garfield looking into the camera and name dropping “Tom Cruise”, I thought Garfield flying on pizza boxes with the music riff from Top Gun was chuckle worthy.
CON: The antagonists are measly and uninspired, with very little threat, and there’s no internal tension between the characters strong enough to make up for their little threat; alongside the fact the villains barely endanger Garfield himself, but instead his dad Vic!
CON: Although internal development and plot is more important than external plot, both of them are extremely weak, with the adventure the characters embark on being extremely boring and uninspired. We visit an abandoned mall, a moving train, the exterior and interior of the milk factory, and then back to the train. All of these destinations rely on too much slapstick humor that even kids will get bored of.
CON: The credits end with random cat meme clips. Secret Life of Pets 2, another very underwhelming film, does the same thing, and makes for a boring and uninspired after credits. Yes, I’m even judging end credits, at least represent the team that made your film in style.
CON: Although I enjoy Christ Pratt’s work in Marvel’s GOTG, and his performance as Super Mario in “SMBMovie” not being all that bad (coming from a die-hard Mario fan btw), I did not enjoy Chris Pratt’s high energy, youthful voice over a character that is supposed to be snarky, lazy, and sarcastic. This is Chris Pratt’s weakest voice acting yet, and he really should have skipped the extra couple bucks over this film.
Conclusion:
Garfield is a children’s film so heavily directed at children, it’s terribly boring for any other age to view. It felt like an episode of The Garfield Show that was forced to be extended into an hour and 40 mins (which btw, The Garfield Show has a much funnier and accurate iteration of Garfield, which also featured much better voice acting and fourth-wall breaks, including the show’s famous “I know where you live” which turned into a great meme). This film could have been turned into a 20-30 minute special at most and still had the same non-existent impact.
Although I didn’t expect much out of Garfield, and frankly planned on not seeing it at all, I had a good friend convince me to come view it with them for fun, so I decided to go in and see if Garfield would be a pleasant surprise, but it resulted in being worse than I anticipated. I found myself literally scrolling on Instagram at multiple points in the film, and when I would decide to pay attention again, I had missed nothing of importance or substance. Two people walked out during the film and never came back, and I would have done the same if it weren’t for the fact I’m here to review. Multiple points in the movie I groaned and hung my head back, disappointed in the dog-water writing, such as when Garfield and Vic are literally told by another character their relationship has “seemingly improved” and therefore their adventure can continue. Was it so hard to write a scene for us and not just let us viewers digest it themselves?
Overall I rate The Garfield Movie a 3/10.
What did rock though was getting this goofy photo before the movie started, with the Garfield Show meme plastered across my shirt saying. “I know where you live!”
Thank you for reading all the way to the end! If you enjoyed this article, please read more on my home page, share with anybody who would also enjoy this article, and leave your thoughts in the comments! Please support my social platforms and the ‘Gunn’s Garage’ blog as I hope my reviews reach more popculture fans like you!
-Caleb Gunn, Writer, Actor, Artist, and ‘Self-Proclaimed’ Celebrity
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