Sony has claimed the rights to this iconic character, and considering the last cinematic effort is not necessarily beloved, you would think that they’d be able to raise that bar. After all, the 20 year old Garfield movie featuring Bill Murray isn’t on anyone’s favorites list. Well, I think this is maybe a reason to revisit our feelings about that original Bill Murray version, because this one seems to have been written by artificial intelligence.
Instead of Bill Murray, we now have Chris Pratt, in yet another animated voice performance. He’s not the worst choice for the lazy lasagna loving cat, but he’s a little weird to play the son of Samuel L Jackson. Yeah, this is a road trip, finding your roots, long lost father movie. It is like no one can figure out why there isn’t a Peter Rabbit 3, and that perhaps if they regurgitated that plot onto Garfield, it would suffice as a story.
So instead of Garfield lazing about the house, eating Jon out of house and home, and battling Odie and Nermal, he goes on a road trip (albeit with Odie), and his long lost father, who turns out to be a career criminal who owes another cat a debt that must be paid in the form of a lot of milk. There’s a pretty impressive voice cast here, ranging from Ving Rhames to Brett Goldstein, and often this film seems to survive on charm alone.
I’ve seen so many critics being hard on the film, and while I can’t comment on the animation style, or the look of these iconic characters, I do wonder if the target demo even knows who Garfield is. With the lack of a Saturday morning cartoon, or the fact that newspaper circulation is down and kids aren’t “reading the funnies” anymore, do they even know how far from Jim Davis’s original work this actually is. It just feels like a generic plot given to an intellectual property in the hopes of bringing butts in seats.
So, it is disappointing from an adult standpoint, which is why so many critics dislike it. It fails to truly be an adaptation of the thing most people old enough to be on the tomatometer remember from their childhood, and things like this are likely why Bill Waterston never licensed Calvin and Hobbes. Still, it isn’t the worst film of the year. It isn’t something I’d recommend, but of the films I’m leaning negative on, this is nearer to the top. Some of these actors, like Rhames, bring heart to these roles, even if the role doesn’t really fit. And, for the first 10-15 minutes, that did feel like Garfield.
Sony tends to rely heavily on Motion Picture Solutions for their audio description, so it was a fine track, but I maybe would have tried to engage the kids a bit more, and picked a narrator who knew their target demo was likely under 10. however, the counter-argument is that with all the years adults had real Garfield, maybe making a nostalgic look that aimed not at the kids, but at the adults would have been the better swing. After all, don’t we all hate Mondays?
Final Grade: C-
