Garfield, like Shrek, is more than just a cartoon character. He’s a cultural phenom, one whose memetic status looms larger and more significant than his originating work. Even someone who hasn’t ever read a single frame of Jim Davis’s long-running comic strip would still likely know two important things about the character: he loves lasagna and hates Mondays. Another important thing about Garfield is that nothing happens in Garfield. The strip relies on a formula so banal, in fact, that in 2008, a technology manager named Dan Walsh successfully managed to erase the oversized orange tabby entirely from his own comic strip — in a webcomic called Garfield Minus Garfield. In the foodie feline’s absence, Walsh’s work reveals Davis’s strips to be subversive studies in quiet despair, as Garfield’s owner, Jon Arbuckle, contends with crippling self-doubt and chronic depression. Why do people gravitate towards this? Is it because, in reality, Garfield is the least interesting part of Garfield?
This is to say that Jon Arbuckle — poor soul he is — is barely featured in The Garfield Movie, a new animated film from Sony Pictures Animation. Instead, director Mark Dindal (Chicken Little, The Emperor’s New Groove) serves up a fast-paced barrage of visual gags and pop culture references, as Garfield (voiced by Chris Pratt) is whisked along on a convoluted dairy heist plot by his alley-cat father, Vic (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson, presumably cashing a significant check). In short, it’s Mission Impawsable. This is not the first attempt to bring Garfield to the big screen. In 2004, Bill Murray voiced the character in a poorly-received live-action adaptation, ostensibly because he mistook the movie’s screenwriter, Joel Cohen, for the significantly more famous Joel Coen (the veracity of this story has been questioned, but it’s funny to imagine). Murray would later admit, appearing as himself in 2009’s Zombieland that his biggest regret was “Garfield, maybe.” Pratt’s take isn’t nearly as bad, but that’s like comparing Chef Boyardee to Spaghettios — vaguely more appetizing in concept, but it still comes from a can.
The significant issue with The Garfield Movie is that, well, it doesn’t feel like a Garfield movie. Undeniably, it’s pretentious to categorize Davis’s strip as an exploration of “domestic ennui,” (though that’s a great phrase) but at its core, this is a comic about a cat who does nothing except eat. To transform Garfield into an active agent in a fast-paced adventure plot is to obfuscate the entire appeal of the character, whose day-to-day existence is so repetitive that Davis often uses the same identical frames for entire strips. Screenwriters Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgove, and David Reynolds make sure to hit the obvious beats — lasagna, Mondays, etc. — but otherwise, Garfield could be swapped out for pretty much any animated character, and it wouldn’t change much about the movie. Once it becomes obvious that the movie’s climax is, perplexingly, going to be a direct rip-off of the third act of Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning — Part One, Garfield even feels the need to mention that “this is what Tom Cruise does.” At least they’re acknowledging their influences.
The plot is a bit of a bait-and-switch. As the story begins, Garfield enjoys a luxurious life with Odie (voiced by Harvey Guillén) and his “roommate,” Jon Arbuckle (voiced by Nicholas Hoult), who is essentially an indentured servant. As a voice actor, Pratt doesn’t do much to make his performance memorable, hired presumably because he’s a recognizable name. C’mon, Sony, Nick Offerman even looks like Garfield! He’s ripped from his lethargic existence when he and Odie are kidnapped by Nolan (voiced by Bowen Yang) and Roland (voiced by Brett Goldstein), two tough dogs working for Jinx (voiced by Hannah Waddingham), a failed show cat jilted by Garfield’s estranged father, Vic. In retribution for Vic’s perceived betrayal, Jinx forces the reluctant father-son duo on a risky mission to steal thousands of quarts of milk from Lactose Farms, along the way teaming up with a bull named Otto (voiced by Ving Rhames) who agrees to help them in return for freeing his imprisoned bovine girlfriend, Ethel (voiced by Alicia Grace Turrell).
Small children will likely get some enjoyment out of the movie’s wacky hijinks, and the Looney Tunes-esque gag-a-minute ratio produces the occasional chuckle through sheer quantity alone. Even still, the pacing can be oddly stilted, as the narrative increasingly focuses on a sentimental exploration of Garfield and Vic’s relationship and forgiving past wrongs. There’s nothing sinful about bringing a little emotional heft to Garfield, but many of these scenes fall flat compared to their comedic counterparts. At 101 minutes, Sony Animation’s latest is relatively short, but not quite short enough. By the time Snoop Dogg shows up as a character named Snoop Catt, it’s difficult to be completely mad at the experience, but that’s also the extent of the movie’s cleverness. The Garfield Movie is disappointingly anonymous for such a distinctive eponymous character. As an odd confection of corporate IP and assorted Sony product placement, the result is serviceable, but far from purr-fect.
Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures
The post The Garfield Movie appeared first on Spectrum Culture.