The Garfield Movie is based on a cartoon cat from the newspapers and later turned into a movie with the titular cat voiced by Bill Murray decades later. Garfield is a cat who likes to eat pizza and lasagna and anything else he can get his hands on. As well as tormenting the dog, Odie, his owner, Jon Arbuckle, has. This cat isn’t like any other cat, maybe that’s why people enjoy reading and watching his exploits on the big screen. This new animated film featuring the overstuffed orange feline doesn’t tread any new ground.

There is a framing device where Garfield voiced by (Chris Pratt) decides he’s going to tell the audience in a fourth-wall-breaking opening scene that he has a story for them that they haven’t heard of before. His origin story with a little history left out about his long lost father. He was left behind by him and found by Jon. The rest is history, right? Not so fast. When Garfield’s father reappears after being gone for years he gets him involved in an adventure of a lifetime. Even though cats have nine lives this is an adventure to remember for many years to come.

There are two plot points that annoyed me about this particular Garfield Movie. In order, the first one is that many movies have used the old family figure who comes back into the lives of a son or daughter they had abandoned or left behind. This has been done so many times over the years. I am sick of it at this point. The second point is a life or death mission to accomplish a goal to save said family member from some trouble they are in. Once again an overused trope in films these days. This is a classic story point from noir films. That’s how old and overdone it is. Combined these two things make this story nothing new I haven’t seen before. I was hoping for something better.

Chris Pratt has garnered a lot of fame for playing Starlord in the MCU. The Guardians of the Galaxy films were the big break he needed. Pratt has branched out though into other action sci-fi films and series. Another thing he has done is start to do voice-over work in animated films like The Mario Brothers Movie and now The Garfield Movie. He has a good voice for animation and it makes sense he’s getting these roles. This script didn’t do him any favor though. He got a nice paycheck for his good voice-over work once again though. It’s too bad the movie couldn’t have been better.

Besides Pratt, the voice-over cast was quite stacked. A couple of Ted Lasso alums play Jinx (Hannah Waddingham) and Roland (Bret Goldstein) a cat and a dog out for revenge against Garfield’s dad Vic (Samuel L Jackson) Also a couple of SNL alums play Nolan another of Jinx’s henchman Bowen Yang and Cecily Strong plays Marge a security guard at the milk factory Garfield, Vic and Odie are trying to rob to pay Jinx back. Ving Rhames plays Otto, a bull who has a vested interest in helping this motley crew of animals break into the milk factory.  All told this was a fantastic group of voice actors who all did a solid job.

Lately, animated films have been doing a great job of doing something different with their animation. There have been all kinds of styles. From computer animation to classic hand-drawn animation to stop-motion animation.  The Garfield Movie takes the computer animation approach with the framing sequence being slightly different than the bulk of the movie. The problem is this animation style isn’t anything new I haven’t seen before. Studios like Pixar, Disney Animation Illumination, and Dreamworks have all pioneered their styles. This style is pretty simple and straightforward.  It didn’t stand out to me in any way. It was quite mundane, to be honest. I know the animation has to depict an iconic character like Garfield,  but it also has to be good and this wasn’t a good animation compared to others I’ve seen more recently. 

The Garfield Movie suffers from the fact that it’s nothing new film fans haven’t seen before. The story is two plots viewers have seen most recently in, The Chicken Run Dawn of the Nugget, and the other similar family members come home after a lost or dead story. I’ve seen these types of stories done so many times before. The animation is quite mundane. It doesn’t stand out among other animation styles in the past. The voice cast was very good, especially Pratt as the title character. I want to like every film I see. I just didn’t like this one as much as I’d hoped I would.

2 stars

Dan Skip Allen