The Garfield Movie Review

Yet another day, yet another reboot of a beloved franchise.

But wait, what's this? The movie has a fantastic start, which introduces us to a baby version of Garfield (Chris Pratt) meeting his pet human Jon Arbuckle (Nicholas Hoult) for the first time. Yes, Garfield is the owner of all that he sees, liberally using Jon's credit card for food delivery and the latest gadgets to double down on his lazy habits. Enabling Garfield is the rather excellent beagle Odie (Harvey Guillén), a loyal and supposedly dim-witted companion who always has to set things right after Garfield invariably messes them up.

However, just when things begin to look interesting, the film goes to a predictable, samey cartoon adventure flick where the lead character is flung into a dastardly plot and has to overcome his scared, sheltered past self to save the day. Garfield is roped into (literally, at points) a heist by his long-lost father, Vic (Samuel L Jackson), who has to repay a debt owed to the catty Jinx (Hannah Waddingham), and the movie fails to live up to the anticipation its start creates.

Not that The Garfield Movie isn't entertaining - far from it. It just takes the safe approach and offers little new. Chris Pratt doesn't sound as out of place as he was in the Mario movie, but the voice still feels too familiar to be attributed to a talking ginger cat. Samuel L Jackson does an okay job as Vic, mostly due to how average the film's plot is. Ving Rhames seems to have had the most fun with his voice acting, as the bull Otto who speaks with slow, measured utterances and has a penchant for deliberate pauses to add dramatic effect which always throws Garfield off. It is a pretty funny running gag throughout the movie.

The score is where The Garfield Movie gets it right - John Debney's music is packed with banger after banger. Snoop Dogg (who also has a small voice role) worked with Keith Urban to create a fun title track called Let It Roll. Hannah Waddingham flexes her stage background with her powerful song I'm Back, which is quite an earworm. We also have a couple of familiar old tunes like Dean Martin's That's Amore and the funny/shocking inclusion of Let's Get it On by Marvin Gaye for a romantic reunion between Ethel (Alicia Grace Turrell) and Otto.

Speaking of Let's Get It On, it did surprise us how wild the movie was for a children's flick. Between double entendre, a woke joke and a steamy romance between Ethel, a cow, and Otto, a bull, The Garfield Movie was quite unpredictable with its sneaky humour.

The other thing that catches you by surprise is the number of product placements inside the movie. We counted Olive Garden (an American casual dining restaurant that serves Italian-American food), Walmart and FedEx, and can't recollect many others.

Unfortunately for The Garfield Movie, its actual plot is the exact opposite of surprising - a damn shame. Despite that, it is plenty fun for kids, and an okay one-time watch for everyone else, and is overall a pretty safe bet for a weekend excursion as far as entertainment goes.