The Garfield Movie Review

 

The Garfield Movie is an animated comedy movie based on Jim Davis' comic strip, Garfield. It's produced by Columbia Pictures, Alcon Entertainment, DNEG Animation, Prime Focus, One Cool Group Limited, and Wayfarer Studios and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. The Garfield Movie is written by Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgove, and David Reynolds and directed by Mark Dindal.

The story is, Garfield is living the life. He gets to sit around and do nothing, watch TV, and enjoy eating all of his favorite foods, especially lasagna. Things take an expected turn when not only is he kidnapped along with Odie, but they meet Vic, Garfield's father. Just to make matters even more complicated, they're forced to team up for a high risk adventure.

Initial Reaction

Now I fully admit I'm not a Garfield fan. I mean sure every once and awhile I'd watch reruns of Garfield and Fans, saw a little bit of The Garfield Show, and I even watched those 3D animated movies, and the live-action. So while I do have history with the franchise and was entertained for the most part, much like all of those, I decided to give this movie a chance and see what I'm in for.

Cons

I've got nothing.

Middle Ground

There are three gray areas when it comes to The Garfield Movie, one being the voice acting. Now, while I didn't fully get behind Chris Pratt as Garfield, I still thought he did fine. Then there's others such as Samuel L. Jackson, Ving Rhames, Hannah Waddingham, etc. were also great with their characters. The worst though was Nicholas Hoult as Jon. Now I don't have anything against Hoult. I think he's a great (although underrated) actor, who's starred in a lot of good stuff. But I just couldn't get behind the voice he gave Jon. It just sounded bad. Then there's the story. Now it's by no means bad, it's actually pretty decent. While watching I do feel like there was some care put into it, it's just that the story isn't going to break any new ground. The last is the changes. While I may not be the biggest fan of Garfield, even I was fully aware that they made changes from the source material. For instance, Odie isn't just a typical dog, he's very highly skilled in this. But the thing for me is, while I can understand some of the complaints, I don't think the changes were too damaging. It's not even the first time they've changed something about Garfield. Remember those 3D animated movies like Garfield Gets Real, Garfield's Fun Fest, etc? In those movies he's a cartoon character who's aware he's a comic strip character who's comics get sent to the real world. So yeah, not the most drastic changes made to the character.

Pros

The two pros are the humor and animation. While the slapstick can get repetitive, I thought there was some funny lines. As for the animation, it's really good. Lots great details on the characters, nicely done backgrounds, and whenever there's an action scene, there's a lot of energy put in there.

Now this is by no means a perfect movie but, I do feel as though a lot of the negative reviews really shouldn't be treating this movie as harshly as they are.

My final rating is, Okay.

Alright that's going to do it for me. Come back on Thursday, May 30th, for part five of Looking Back at the Films of 2023. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.