2004 comedy
Rating: 7/20 (Abbey: 14/20; Buster: no response)
Plot: Jon Arbuckle, the owner of the titular feline, gets a dog in order to impress Jennifer Love Hewitt. Garfield isn’t happy about it.
The animation in this is really pretty good, but that doesn’t make this whole thing any less creepy or any more entertaining. This has numerous problems. First, Garfield is a completely unlikable character. In the comic strip, he’s a lazy, sarcastic surly glutton. Here, he’s all these things but also a little mean. Bill Murray is probably the perfect voice for Garfield, but either he’s uninspired or the writing is uninspiring or a combination of the two. Second, this is a comedy made for children, but it’s not funny at all. And I should know because I have the mind of a child. It’s definitely not funny for adults. I mean, it’s not like the comic strip is an uproariously hilarious piece of genius that interrupts breakfasts all over America or anything, so I don’t know why I expected something funnier. Or something that wouldn’t bore me so much that I felt like force-feeding myself lasagna until I barfed just so I could say I did something with my Saturday. A lot of times, movie people try to stretch a half an hour sitcom into a full-length movie and it just doesn’t work. This is trying to stretch a comic strip into a full-length movie, and the results are predictable. Speaking of predictability: Third, this is writing that takes absolutely no chances. You’ll know exactly where this is going the entire time, and there’s something almost painful about feeling a step or two ahead of the movie you’re watching. With the failed humor and plot predictability, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that this was written by the same people who brought us those talking chipmunk movies. May there be a special place in hell for them. I will not be seeing the sequel.
