The Garfield Movie (2024) -

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This movie drags. And drags, and drags, and drags. About half way through the movie my girlfriend told me she was feeling sick, and from that moment forward I began hoping she would ask to leave just so we could be done with this shitfest of a film. Besides the boring voice acting from Chris Pratt, the mediocre animation, and the extremely lame characters (besides Odie), the plot was also just not fun. I don’t mean it in a way where it’s clear they tried something different and it just didn’t work out. I mean it in the sense that they did everything that every animated movie has done before, but somehow worse. There are basically no plot twists, no interesting new concepts, and no way for the movie to pull on your heart strings. The movie is also told in a flashback format for a large part of it until… it’s not? Which maybe is something a little different, but it ends up being forgotten and also doesn’t play any significant part in the actual plot. And after the flashback portion, Chris Pratt still breaks the fourth wall on multiple occasions (primarily to tell some shitty joke that was hardly thought through at all) making both portions blend together. Are you being told the story as it happened in the past? Are you watching it actively unfold? Is it both? The worst part of all of these questions is that I think the answers can be found in the movie, but I felt so zoned out during different segments to the point where a whopping 2 hours after watching it, I already seemed to have forgotten.

And in all honesty, I think that’s the best way to describe this movie. It’s going to be forgotten. Even for children who come out saying they really liked the movie, I would bet 90% of them will forget they even watched it within a week. This movie is also hard for older folk to enjoy primarily because this movie was barely even about the lazy and grumpy cat they grew to know and love from the comics. In the creators‘ defense, I don’t know exactly what would make it about Garfield. The “I hate Mondays” and love for food references can only carry this movie so far, and at some point it just becomes oversaturated. It’s clear the Garfield name is used simply to garner publicity and bring people in to see it, but I wish there were some way they could have approached making the movie relate to Garfield rather than just slap his name on a movie about a cat and his adventures.

One last thing I want to mention is the god awful product placement. How many can you count in your first viewing? It’s sad that studios nowadays sell out for these brands instead of taking more opportunities to create silly cat puns that at least make you smile. I am happy we got “The Great Catsby” and “Romeo and Mew-liet” (though the latter is significantly lazier than the first), but some more of these would have been warmly welcomed in my book as opposed to simply plugging Walmart and FedEx in.

Despite all of these epic fails from Dindal & Co., the movie did have some fine aspects which settled me at the perfectly average rating of 2.5 stars. During some part of the movie my girlfriend leaned over to me and told me it would be a great movie for kids with ADHD. And in all honesty, I think she’s right. With how fast paced this movie is, if I weren’t an adult who found the entire plot extremely bland and boring, this would probably be pretty exciting for a little kid. Once again, I don’t think it’s going to be particularly memorable for them, but I think that they’ll enjoy their time in the theater, at the very least.