54291: The Garfield Movie

The Garfield Movie is fine. It won’t win any Oscars, but there’s also nothing offensively bad about it. In short, it is a faithful extension of the Garfield comic strip. This Garfield, voiced by Chris Pratt for some reason, is largely the same snarky, lasagna-snarfing, Monday-hating orange blob who has graced the newspaper funny pages since 1978. On paper, Garflied cracks wise, three panels at a time, ad infinitum, and steadfastly refuses to either learn or grow. Perhaps that’s why he resonated so strongly with Gen X kids in the 80s and 90s. Garfield, as we’ve known him for the last 46 years, isn’t really built for emotional arcs, both in terms of character and medium. There just isn’t the space, or the desire, to see Garfield get deeper.

And yet, this movie manages to shoehorn an emotional arc into the story by retconning Garfield’s origin. I can’t believe that is a sentence I just wrote. In this version, Garfield, as a kitten, meets Jon on a dark and stormy night—the night Garfield’s father abandoned him, no less. Jon adopts Garfield, and an adorable montage of visual gags ensues. So, just like so many heroes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Garfield carries a chip on his shoulder, carefully placed there by a father figure on his way out the door (Iron Man, Starlord, The Wasp, T'Challa, Gamora, etc). It’s a wonderfully messy plot device, which the director, Mark Dindal, and writer, David Reynolds, spend two solid acts milking.

So, now that you’ve established that Garfield will wrestle with his unresolved trauma around his father, the question remains as to how to get them into close physical proximity so they can have their catharsis.

The obvious answer, of course, is “turn it into a heist movie.”

Just in case you were worried that The Garfield Movie was going to wallow in introspection, don’t. Garfield’s father is brought back into his life not by a well-meaning family therapist, but by a vengeful cat from his past. Vic, Garfield’s father, admirably voiced by Samuel L. Jackson, was the erstwhile leader of a milk-thieving criminal operation, and one of his past accomplices, Jinx, is out of prison (animal shelter) and looking for payback from Vic. It's like Oceans 11 or The Getaway, except with a bunch of cats.

Fun fact: Jinx is voiced by Hannah Waddingham and she doesn’t sing a single fucking song in the whole movie. Not one.

Anyway, what unfolds is a pretty standard heist/revenge story, with plenty of betrayal, surprise plans, an action sequence on top of a train, etc. etc. etc. You can probably fill in the details of the plot. But, like I said above, the plot is really just a contrivance to get Garfield and Vic together in one space so the healing can begin.

I won’t fault the movie for drawing on classic/tired plot structures. This is a perfectly serviceable Garfield movie, and the kids I saw it with thought it was great. The voice cast is great (with the caveat noted above that Hannah/Jinx never sings), the jokes are ridiculous, the animation is gorgeous, and the film wraps up well before it wears out its welcome. I actually started to quibble with the quick and easy way Garfield heals his abandonment issues, once he opens his heart to his father, but then I thought, “What the hell do I know about the emotional elasticity of housecats?”

So, instead, I will just say that The Garfield Movie is good enough fun for the kids and with enough easter eggs, celebrity cameos, and competent storytelling to make it worth sitting through as an adult chaperone. But maybe don’t rewatch it.