The Garfield Movie: Is This Movie Worse Than a Monday?
Copyright © Sony Pictures Entertainment, Columbia Pictures, DNEG Animation
Title: The Garfield Movie
Director: Mark Dindal
Based on: Garfield by Jim Davis
Release Date: May 24, 2024
Judging on how Chris Pratt is part of the voice cast, this did not convince everyone. This was supposedly an animated version to prove that Sony would make a better Garfield movie than 20th Century did twenty years ago. Back in 2004, Garfield: The Movie performed well commercially but also did not perform well with critical reception. For this review, this will be about Sony's version, The Garfield Movie, which is the customized cinematic take on the comic strip. At the box office, it received a solid $232 million worldwide, showing that this is a decent start for a non-SPA animated film. On the dark side, it performed negatively with critics. However, most audiences loved the movie. The Rotten Tomatoes scores are 36% for critics and 80% for audiences, unlike the 2004 movie that performed badly with both of them. From IMDb, its score is an average 5.8/10. Going to Metacritic, the scores are 31 (critic score) and 5.0 (user score). Even if this will need more originality and some major fixes, The Garfield Movie is a decent cheese dinner that does not happen to be worse than any Monday.
Summary
Garfield (Chris Pratt), a lazy lasagna-loving cat, prefers to stay indoors with his owner Jon (Nicholas Hoult) and best friend Odie (Harvey Guillén). When he suddenly reunites with his lost father, Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), a street cat, he gets sent on an exciting heist adventure outdoors. Of course, he cannot leave Odie behind from the robbery of dairy.
Reasons
The gourmet lasagnas of The Garfield Movie are the incredible animation, star-studded voice acting, and tuneful soundtrack. To get the cat out of the bag, the animation is cute and well-done, even if it did not involve Sony Pictures Animation into the scene. Instead, it was done by DNEG Animation, the same animation company for Nimona and Ron's Gone Wrong, which is an excellent choice thanks to their experience with the two aforementioned films. The animation has a playful art style done with proper rendering and lighting, so that the comics could come to life like that. All of the character designs are adorable, especially baby Garfield's design, to make sure the movie looks like the comics while still looking marketable in general. Another thing that is gourmet about the movie is the star-studded voice acting. All of the actors, including Chris Pratt, were great and entertaining on their voice roles. Besides Pratt, there is also Samuel L. Jackson, Hannah Waddingham, Nicholas Hoult, Bowen Yang, and even Snoop Dogg. Despite how they included them for marketing, it turned out that the cast did voice their characters with talent and expertise. What's another delicious thing about the movie? It is the soundtrack that is filled with originally-written bops and fun musical score. The best songs from the movie would be "Let it Roll" by Keith Urban and Snoop Dogg plus "Good Life" by Jon Batiste. Their beats and melodies fit the wacky tone of the story. In addition, the score composed by John Debney is awesome for its level of cinematic value.
Even for its cat-like nature, there are some hairy mixed bags from The Garfield Movie which are the faithfulness to the comics, whimsical characters, and how Chris Pratt got here. This movie wanted to be more exciting and humorous which raises some eyebrows on comparisons to this story and the comic strips. They did most things like Garfield's laziness and love for lasagna. Despite keeping most of Garfield's character, it was never revealed that he had a long-lost father at all. Honestly, in this movie's case, taking creative liberties from the strips is not completely a bad thing because Garfield is an iconic kids franchise. Heck, it even has its own visual media which shows the titular cat in different situations and the like. Still, it did use the same humor mixed with today's humor. Some jokes were a hit-or-miss while the rest were spot-on. Next up, to tie in with talking more about Garfield himself, most of the characters are entertaining but some of them fall flat. This movie's version of Garfield (Chris Pratt) is likable and still the one that everyone knows about. He could just use some more leverage on his laziness in order to make for a better take on his character. Vic (Samuel L. Jackson) is okay but not really an original exclusive for the line up. Well, Jackson did use the talent he have to capture the character well. The other original characters, Jon (Nicholas Hoult) and Odie (Harvey Guillén), are likable as well. Let's give this movie bonus points for hiring someone to voice Odie. From the movie's character line up, the villain, Jinx (Hannah Waddingham), was one of them that did fall flat. Sure, Waddingham did a great job voicing her, but her turn to evil would have been more justified. It seemed like the writers wanted to make her an irredeemable and unlikable villain, so they would have fixed her backstory and made her tactics humorous. That way, she would be a villain that people can love and hate at the same time. Last but not least for this paragraph, how was Chris Pratt signed to voice Garfield himself? As said before, he did a great voice performance but he was miscast. Everyone knows about his voicing history like Emmet from The Lego Movie and Mario from The Super Mario Bros. Movie. If companies keep on hiring him to voice well-known protagonists, then it would slowly get tiring and unfitting. Garfield should have been voiced by Frank Welker, who voiced him in The Garfield Show, or at least someone from the 2010s era of voice acting. That way, it is not just Chris Pratt all the time.
Although not being a bad movie, The Garfield Movie's formulaic plot, rushed character writing, and false advertising are its Mondays. First of all, it uses a food heist plot done with dairy products. Not only is this overused in many other movies but it is unfitting for a Garfield film. Plus, it also uses the long-lost family member plot which many other animated movies used already! DreamWorks did it multiple times with their sequels, Disney has done it a couple of times, and so on. If they made Vic someone else other than a long-lost father, then the movie would have opted for some creativity. To go back to something again, the character writing is rushed, especially for the new characters written as exclusives for the story. Vic is okay but his character is mainly full of the long-lost father trope and nothing else. That is all the movie can tell about him. What's even worse is Jinx's character. She has barely any justification on her villainy and revenge which does raise some eyebrows on her motivations. Lastly, the movie also has false advertising, yet this is a minor yet felonious issue. Jon is shown in most of the posters to illustrate that he is one of the main characters of the movie. However, in the final product, he barely has any screen time, marking him as a minor character. As for the rest of the advertising, it is spot-on and hilarious. Notably, the movie has its poster parodies of other movies released at the time, such as its parody of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which was released on the exact same day. More animated kids movies should do that move here and there.
Conclusion
Despite its major writing flaws and noticeable formula usage, the cute animation and star-studded voice performances show that The Garfield Movie is a cheese dinner being not as bad as any Monday. Again, DNEG Animation is an excellent choice for animating CGI Garfield thanks to their experience with Netflix's Nimona and other animated movies. Even with Chris Pratt being the voice of Garfield himself, the cast did surprisingly entertaining and well-done on the roles they were voicing. The soundtrack, full of original pop songs and John Debney's musical score, fit for this movie's wacky nature. While still being a good movie, it does have its flaws, like the formulaic plot and rushed character writing, which needs originality instead of what is popular at the time. That way, the movie will become more enjoyable for not just for kids but for adults as well. If you are a fan of the Garfield comics or you just have younger kids sticking around, this would not be a bad pick. There are worse movies of the year out there in the wild.
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