Garfield: The Movie

Garfield: The Movie

Ever since I heard about Garfield, I have been a big fan of the character and the storyline that revolves around it. I was just six years when the film adapted Garfield into a movie. Apart from that, there are films such as “Garfield Gets Real,” “Garfield’s Fun Fest,” and the more recent “Garfield’s Pet Force,” which I still get to enjoy.

At that time, I was just a kid, so these films were particularly fascinating to me. Fast forward a few years when news about a new film hit the scene. However, I was rather skeptical about the film’s quality and its reception, and I must say, this film was quite a revelation. The film was received really well and was praised across the globe. It held many great emotional moments that were perfectly complemented with humors. Out of all animated films this year, I find The Garfield Movie to be the best.

The famous cat, Garfield, voiced by Chris Pratt, is known for his hatred of Mondays and love of lasagna. Bullying everything changes when he meets his estranged father, a scruffy streetcar named Vic, voiced by Samuel L. Jackson. This fateful meeting pushes Garfield, along with his canine companion Odie, on an outsized and hilarious misadventure with Vic.

And surprisingly, The Garfield Movie is essentially an episodic romp! This may be difficult to accept understandably because this character may not be so suitable for this idea at all, but believe me it is a hilarious, captivating, and at times incredibly heartwarming story which is bound to satisfy the intended demographic. I can just picture children worldwide being enamored with this one. The premise is rather basic, really basic in fact, and the script never adheres to any kind of sense at any moment, but that’s because this is strictly a child’s film, and children do not care for sense.

Such events will take place, and everyone will be entirely clueless regarding the circumstances surrounding their occurrence; but then again, that’s fine because children aren’t concerned about it! This is a film intended for enjoyment, and that’s quite literally all there is to it, but along with that, it does attempt to concentrate on one specific aspect of the narrative, which I am thankful is effectively done, I shed a few tears at some points.

Definitely the characters are the highlights, Garfield is somewhat different than what I’m used to, the only thing I remember is that he used to be a more ‘grumpy’ character in the previous movies, but here he is quite the goof, trying to be comical all the times and of course that does not come without no critique, some of the jokes do go through but I must say, a lot were just simply deep cringey jokes that didn’t really work for me.

Am glad Chris Pratt was a Garfield rather than a Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, I understand they are completely diverse roles but in The Garfield Movie, to my surprise, he does have some character which is a strong progression, he certainly has a lovely bond with his dad which is the center of emotion in this film, I certainly recommend you take yourself and your kids to go enjoy this movie.

The animation, however, is perhaps my all-time favorite. I am impressed with what has been achieved here for a budget of $60M which is very low for the expected returns of this film! What a charming and nostalgic animation style! It brings back memories of the animated features that I have mentioned earlier. While I want to praise it, there are a few things I would like to address. For one, the script at times just chose the most barebone approach to writing for certain story arcs.

For instance, one such moment is when Vic tells his wife that he ‘left’ Garfield in the box his son. I think it could have been something a lot stronger and a lot deeper and way more interesting, but in the end, it was just too comical and destroyed the serious ambience that the movie was trying to create at that point. Things like that are understandable pains but I also get it, that they were trying to write an uncomplicated story so as not to hassle the younger audience.

There has been a continued trend of underperformance with animated films this year but The Garfield Movie is here to break this chain, a comical and fun filled film that most will walk out feeling good, or as they might like to say in this case “feline”. According to most, The Garfield Movie is the finest animated film to date this year. A charming escapade with a few heavy emotional arcs which irrespective of few shortcomings, succeeds in satisfying its intended audience.

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