Director: Mark Dindal
Actors: Chris Pratt, Harvey Guillen, Samuel L Jackson, Ving Rhames
Genre: Animation / Family
Rating: G
‘The Garfield Movie’ is the first fully-CGI Garfield film, 46 years
after our favourite fat-cat first appeared in newspaper comics. I can’t compare
this film to the other Bill Murray films, as I haven’t seen them. This time,
Garfield is voiced by Chris Pratt, who’s earning a solid living voicing lead
characters in animated films – ‘The Lego Movie’, ‘Onward’, ‘The Super Mario Bros.
Movie’. We get a nice flashback to how kitten Garfield, super-cute, and Jon (Hoult)
first met and their comfortable life with dog Odie (Guillen).
The film then
turns into a Mission:Impossible style heist film, as Garfield’s dad, Vic
(Jackson) is blackmailed into robbing milk from a dairy, that Garfield and Odie
are coerced into too. The “baddie” is Jinx (Waddingham) – a fluffy-white cat
that’s straight out of Blofeld’s lap from James Bond – as well as her mean-looking
dog goons, Roland (Goldstein) and Nolan (Yang). This is where we meet Otto (Rhames),
the bull – very fitting having Ving Rhames in the heist part of the film! There’s
lots of action and slapstick “injuries”, as Garfield, Odie and Vic break into
the dairy factory and also a train.
The whole Garfield-out-of-the-house is a little different and means Jon’s
not really in it much. Garfield also isn’t too surly and is actually friendly
with Odie, which is nice. There’s probably not as much charm as ‘The Peanuts Movie’,
but it does have a nice little story about family, with Vic and Garfield and explaining
why they were separated for the kids. Some smaller kids may find parts scary, particularly
the big dog and the factory scene with the cheese and knives. Nothing too
hilarious, but enough laughs for the adults to keep it interesting.
Overall: Predictable kids animated adventure
Gav's Rating: 3 stars
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