Consider what we know about Garfield the cat: He’s orange, a little plump, he loves lasagna, he hates Mondays, and — ah, well, that’s about it. Enough information to fill about four comic strip panels, wouldn’t you say? And yet, somehow, this lazy kitty and his very mild exploits (how to get more lasagna, how to sleep through a Monday, etc.) have inspired three television series (with one more on the way), a dozen prime-time specials, and three feature-length films.
While previous cinematic iterations of Garfield’s story have stretched his adventures to wacky ends — the 2004 “Garfield: The Movie” essentially acted as an origin story, while its 2006 sequel “Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties” put a “Prince and the Pauper”-ish twist on his life — the latest in a long, looooooong line of Garfield adaptations goes in the opposite direction. Mark Dindal’s garishly animated “The Garfield Movie” — not to be confused with “Garfield: The Movie” — inserts a beloved feline figure into a feature that feels distinctly divorced from what makes Garfield, well, Garfield.
Those other films at least try to capitalize on Garfield’s decades-old charm, but Dindal’s entry into the canon (complete with a script from no less than three screenwriters, including Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgrove, and David Reynolds) seems hellbent on tossing out the slim facts we know about the fat cat, at least after its high-energy opening scenes have burnt off. Dindal zips us through all the Garfield high points with genuine merriment and zip, tossing in a little baby Garfield origin story to boot (including the tiniest, cutest little animated orange kitten you’ve ever seen), before digging into the real meat of the tale.
Unfortunately, that tale feels less like a Garfield film than a flimsy knock-off of “Chicken Run” — they break into a dairy! — that some Hollywood bigwig likely thought could get a boost with the injection of Jim Davis’ chubby orange tabby. What, this writer often thought during the film’s running time, does any of this have to do with Garfield? Kaplan, Torgrove, and Reynolds at least try to draw some connections, even if those bits feel pulled from the annals of that other reckless orange tabby cat (Heathcliff, of course).
In this new iteration of Garfield, the titular tabby (voiced by Chris Pratt, who seems to have reacted to outcry over his “Super Mario Bros.” casting with some of the laziest voice work in recent memory, there’s nothing about his Garfield that feels special or unique in the slightest) landed in Jon Arbuckle’s (voiced by Nicholas Hoult) life after being abandoned by his tubby father Vic (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson) on a dark and stormy night. When baby Garfield goes searching for food, he finds a lonely Jon at a local Italian restaurant, and the pair instantly (and adorably!) bond.
Fast-forward just five years later, and everything is coming up Garfield. He and Jon have moved to the suburbs, loyal pup Odie is on hand to act as Garfield’s “unpaid intern,” and no meal goes by without plenty of cheese on top. What a terrible time then for (checks notes), a pair of straggly pound pups to kidnap Garfield and Odie for the evil cat Jinx (voiced by an energetic Hannah Waddingham), who has a real bone to pick with Vic. Apparently — and this is where the youngest members of the film’s audience, the very ones who will enjoy this silly, colorful film the most, will surely zone out — Jinx and Vic used to be in a gang together (paging Heathcliff), until a dairy heist went wildly awry and Jinx ended up in the pound while Vic made it out without a scratch.
Her demand: Vic, Garfield, and Odie need to make good on the years she lost in the clink, stealing one quart of milk for each day she was in the pound. It’s about 1,600 quarts. It’s a lot. However to accomplish this? The trio enlist the help of cast-off bull Otto (voiced by Ving Rhames), whose life was upended when his darling little dairy was bought by some corporate bigwigs, who insisted on tossing him out (why? no one can say), while holding on tight to his adorable paramour Ethel. When Vic, Garfield, and Odie literally run into Otto in the grounds around Lactose Farms, a truly “eh, why not?” scheme is hatched, all vague “Chicken Run” ideas with far less heart than that animated classic.
That’s not to say the film doesn’t attempt to put its heart in the right place. While no one has ever worried too much about Garfield’s lineage, “The Garfield Movie” tries to bake in an emotional storyline about fathers and sons, and blending your actual family with your found tribe. (Some points must be given for the film’s restraint when it comes to hinting at continued adventures around Garfield’s mother or litter mates; small mercies, really!) There are numerous high-energy sequences that keep the action bopping right along — “training” montages centering on Vic and Garfield delight, the running gag that Odie is the only one with a brain never run out of steam — but the connective tissue between all of these high-jinks is limper than a lasagna noodle.
Despite those obvious attempts at emotion, “The Garfield Movie” still can’t escape the glare of corporate synergy. “The Garfield Movie” is a Sony production so, no, audiences probably won’t blink when Garfield gently places a pair of boldly SONY!-branded headphones on Jon’s sleeping head, but once the film starts peppering the most benign of scenes with product placement for everything from Olive Garden to Walmart, it will sting.
Is this a kid’s movie or a commercial? And if it’s the latter, a commercial for what exactly? Certainly not more movies like this. I already know about Olive Garden’s breadsticks. I’d like to know more about funny, sweet, smart family-centric features, the kind the multiplex is so desperately lacking. Call it a case of the Mondays, but this kitty needs to go way back to the drawing board.
Grade: C
Sony will release “The Garfield Movie” in theaters on Friday, May 24.
