Garfield the Movie: Movie Review, DVD Review (2004)

(Originally published 2004)

Directed by Pete Hewitt, written by Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow, 85 minutes, rated PG.

The best thing about the new Garfield movie is the computer animated short that proceeds it. It’s called "Gone Nutty" and it stars Scrat, the beleaguered squirrel from 2002’s "Ice Age," who is still trying like hell to save his nuts.

As directed by Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha, the film is funny and inventive, telling its story without words and getting big laughs thanks to its calamitous situations and Scrat’s snowballing despair.

Its appearance before Peter Hewitt’s "Garfield" does the movie a great favor. It warms up the audience and gets them howling, which proves a blessing for "Garfield" as that movie needs all the good will it can get.

As written by Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow, who based their script on the comic strip by Jim Davis, "Garfield," on one level, is exactly what fans of the strip expect: It’s genial and familiar, offering the occasional mild chuckle in an environment that can’t help feeling a bit stale thanks to the strip’s longevity.

What isn’t so familiar is what Hewitt and his screenwriters have done to Garfield (voice of Bill Murray). For some reason, they’ve given him a conscience, which he most certainly doesn’t have in the strip, and featured him in a plot that finds him reacting to the budding love affair between his owner Jon (Breckin Meyer) and veterinarian Liz (Jennifer Love Hewitt), while trying to save his arch enemy, Odie, after he’s dognapped by an evil television reporter (Stephen Tobolowski).

The story is bland and workmanlike--week-old catnip that’s lost its bite. What saves it is the animation, which is set amid a live-action world and which is extremely well done.

With the exception of a few real animals, whose mouths are digitally enhanced to move as they talk, Garfield is the film’s only computer animated character and he’s a well-crafted wonder. A real fat cat, Garfield moves with the realistic heft of a Rubenesque kitty. Most impressive is his fur, the texture of which is perfect, and his oversized eyes, which pop, roll and react to every pseudozinger and manufactured situation as if it were original material. Sometimes, with his constant mugging, you almost believe it is.

The film will appeal most to young children, who will warm to it in ways that their parents won’t. There’s a reason for that. This is indeed a movie for kids--sly innuendoes and risque doubletalk are kept to a minimum. The movie exists to please only one age group, and while its makers could have done it all better, I’ll take "Garfield" any day over last year’s other cat flick, the woeful "The Cat in the Hat."

Gone Nutty--Grade: A
Garfield--Grade: C+

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