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Garfield: The Movie

Starring: Bill Murray, Breckin Meyer, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Stephen Tobolowsky, Evan Arnold
Director: Peter Hewitt

Reviewed by Larry Stanley

How much time do you have to waste? I had about an hour and a half to kill before an appointment, so I went to see Garfield: The Movie.

I should have gone to lunch.

If you have ever read the flat image, newspaper printed cartoon strip or any of the colorful books about the lovable, fat, Lasagna loving cat Garfield, you will have seen this movie. Even with changing Jon Arbuckle (Brekin Meyer) into a semi-loser and not the total loser he plays in the strip, or adding Jennifer Love Hewitt as Liz, the vet turned Jon love interest, or changing the origin of Odie or Nermal, does not help this film become any thing closely resembling entertainment.

Now, don’t misunderstand me; if you are under the age of 8 or 9, this is going to be a great film. But for adults and older teens I would suggest watching water heat. The film runs way too long in my opinion. It would have been much better as a series of single cartoons in 5 minute lengths, like an old Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Bill Murray gives voice to the CGI Garfield, and even he can’t help this cartoon cat to be fun. His voice is perfect, but the writing simply comes nowhere near the written humor of the cartoon strip.

The only redeeming feature in this piece of drek is Stephen Tobolowsky as local TV celebrity Happy Chapman who spies Odie and see’s his chance to break into national TV using the hyper dog's ability to dance around on his hind legs. What is redeeming about it, is Chapman uses a ‘Shock Collar” on Odie, and once he is defeated, the collar is placed on him (Chapman) and we get to see him perform while being mildly electrocuted.

The human characters are almost not even there. And Garfield is a total CGI creation paired with real animals. Which might have been a good idea with the ‘human’ actors as well. All the other dogs, rats, mice and cats have enhanced mouth movements, but when one person picks Garfield up, it is obvious to anyone over 13 that the image is wrong; they should have had the actor actually pick up a cat, and then replaced it with Garfield’s image.
But, I will say that the effects with the live animals were quite well done, and appeared better then most of the ‘Fake Mouth’ animals I have seen.It's just too bad they couldn't have done as well with the rest of the film.

While Garfield: The Movie will make the children laugh, I suggest adults bring a book on tape, plug in the head phones and relax

Rating:

(1/2 out of 4 stars)

Larry Stanley is the editor and publisher of Penguin Comics and Movies, located at http://www.penguincomics.net and has done over 500 movie reviews in his career. He is also a contributing reviewer to Cultcuts magazine (http://www.cultcuts.net) and Columbia360 (http://www.columbia360.com/) as well the magazine Devine Exploitation.

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