Movie of the week: “Garfield”. SPOILERS!

Thank God this was a free ticket because let me tell you, this movie isn’t worth any money you pay for it. A hot candidate for the “movies the world doesn’t need, doesn’t want and never asked for”-category, though there are many contestants these days.

However, “Garfield” should have no problem whatsoever to get in because there are few movies which try so miserably to construct a plot – and fail at that even more miserably. In fact, the “story” is such a flimsy excuse for a plot it wouldn’t fill 5 minutes of a cartoon show, and yet it’s strechted brutally to give us 75 minutes of bad jokes, bad songs and bad actors. Yes, you’ve read that right, “bad songs” means Garfield sings. I know he does this in the cartoons too but with the huge advantage of not being heard! “New dog state of mind” may sound funny but it isn’t – it made me want to plug something into my ears really bad. Needless to say I didn’t find anything and had to endure the rest of the show, too.

Countless belching jokes might appeal to 4-year olds but not to me, and maybe that’s also the problem: I’m too old for this kind of movie. Nevertheless, this being a kid-targeted movie shouldn’t mean it can get away with low quality because even a kid can see the actors are merely stumbling through the sets, say their lines and could easily be replaced by cardboard doppelgangers which would have more facial expressions. Breckin Meyer and Jennifer Love Hewitt are so blank and vacuous they are interchangeable, but it’s not entirely their fault: they are given nothing to do by the script.

Which, as by now you might have noticed, is really really bad. Not only does it change things that were well established in the comic books (like Liz not wanting to go out with Jon, Odie being a Beagle, Nermal being a kitten, Garfield sleeping in a box, drinking coffee and having an on-and-off relationship with Arlene) but it makes Garfield look so unsympathetic this movie should really be called “Odie – the movie”.

Odie gets the advantage of being a real dog that thankfully doesn’t talk and therefore has all my sympathies, while Garfield is an obviously animated, mean, heartless and nonstop babbling cat with human eyes (the other talking animals are okay, if the difference between real and animated cats especially is painfully visible). The Garfield of the comic strips is egoistic, lazy and a glutton but he is also likeable, an attribute which the movie Garfield completely lacks.

We are more worried about Odie’s fate who is abducted and threatened by a 200 volt collar, another plot device I find extremely inappropriate for a kids movie – was that supposed to be funny? It wasn’t, and not only I thought so: there were exactly two scenes in the movie that elicited some laughs, namely the chase scene at the dog show, and a very pointless scene in which Garfield and Odie dance to “Hey mama” by the BEP.

That’s too little for any movie, it’s even more so for “Garfield” because there is nothing else that could make up for it. I suggest you read the comic books, it’s far more entertaining.
1 out of 6 Meeps – avoid.