The Garfield Movie (Marc Dindal, 2024)

The new Garfield movie is a broad but mostly fine animated romp, that will probably please most kids and (at least some of) their accompanying adults.

Mileage may vary, of course, cause the movie feels almost aggressively paced, while the soundscape is at times obnoxiously loud. There are some cringey moments, too, both when the movie is trying too hard to be funny, and when the story beats of this ‘one last heist’ movie get just a little too predictable. 

Still, the fun outweighs the fluff in this Marc Dindal directed caper - based on the characters by Jim Davis - in which the orange fat cat, who loves lasagna but hates Mondays, is taken out of his comfort zone and thrown into the real world where he gets knocked around quite a bit until he learns to adapt and hone his skills, before ultimately becoming his own man annex action hero.

Fortunately, Garfield (voiced by Chris Pratt) has his loyal pet dog Odie (Harvey Guillén) by his side, as well as - perhaps at first unluckily- his long lost criminal father Vic (Samuel L. Jackson).

Garfield is convinced he can’t stand his dad but as these things go, he has more in common with this cunning alley cat than he would like to admit.

Also, Vic is being blackmailed by a former associate, Jinx (Hannah Waddington), and to pay her off he has to get right what he got wrong in the past: a massive milk heist on Lactose Farms, which will make all their problems go away. 

It’s not the most original set-up but the writers - Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgove and David Reynolds - mostly make it work, as a vehicle for a lot of pranks and Pratt-falls, aided by all-round excellent voice work, a lot of references to other movies - like Ving Rhames voicing a bullish character called Otto and inspired by his work in the Mission Impossible films - and a visual style that’s as broad as the sky is wide. 

There is a wonderful scene early on that shows how young Garfield, abandoned as a kitten in the rain, was adopted by lonely cartoonist Jon (Nicholas Hoult, sidelined for large parts of the movie) in a pizza restaurant, and how the kitten subsequently took over his life, and you kind of wish there were more of those.

The movie has a lot of stamina, but it could have used a bit more heart, even though eventually there are some scenes between Garfield and Vic on the one hand, and Otto and his beloved cow Ethel on the other, that do a fair amount of the required emotional heavy lifting.

There is also a character that’s a little too directly inspired by Frances McDormand in Fargo, while fun fact alert: this is the second movie in a row that I’ve seen (after The Fall Guy) in which there is a reference to Tom Cruise and doing one’s own stunts. We’re really living in a monoculture, aren’t we?

Still, there is no reason to go on grumbling, cause at the very least the creators get their main objective right: a Garfield movie that doesn’t suck balls, made me laugh a number of times and has undeniably commercial appeal in a marketplace that desperately needs some kids slash family movies with legs much longer than the animals they are portraying. 

I give it three stars.

Note: The Garfield Movie is out now in  Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, Italy and The Netherlands, with most of the world to follow in the coming weeks.