‘The Garfield Movie’: Lots of Animated Feline Action

PG | 1h 41m | Animation | 2024
During this animated film, you will see Garfield the Cat as you have never seen him before: engaged in strenuous physical activity outside his comfortable home. Needless to say, he is not happy about the situation. Garfield is just as fat, lazy, and grumpy as fans remember, but he has a new voice (Chris Pratt) in Mark Dindal’s all-animated pseudo-reboot, “The Garfield Movie.”
Do not confuse “The Garfield Movie” with “Garfield: The Movie,” released 20 years ago. The 2004 film and its sequel, “Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties,” were live-action hybrids, with an animated Garfield incorporated amid real people. The return to a pure animated format opens up more opportunities for Garfield to wreak havoc upon his surroundings. It also presents the famous orange cat’s origin story.
As Garfield explains in a flashback, his father Vic (the voice of  Samuel L. Jackson) abandoned him as a young kitten. However, little Garfield chanced across Jon Arbuckle (Nicholas Hoult) eating pizza at an Italian restaurant and it was love at first sight; that is, Garfield’s love for pizza. Garfield also has some affection for Jon, too, and he grudgingly accepts Odie the dog (Harvey Guillén) as his fellow pet and housemate. Everything is exactly to Garfield’s liking, until he and Odie are suddenly kidnapped by Roland (Brett Goldstein), an unusually large Shar Pei, and Nolan (Bowen Yang), an incredibly ugly whippet.
Jinx (Hannah Waddingham), a very maniacal Persian cat, ordered their abduction as a means of luring Vic into her lair. She and Garfield’s father were part of the same gang, but she blames the older street cat for her time spent in the pound (prison for pets). As compensation, Jinx demands that Vic, Garfield, and Odie pull off a brazen milk heist from the Lactose Farms, where she was captured by animal control all those years ago. Unfortunately, the milk and cheese processing facility has stepped up security during the intervening years. To pull off the job, the tiger-striped tabby cats will need help from Otto the bull (Ving Rhames), the dairy’s discarded mascot.
While the relatively complex narrative might sound like a departure for fans of the “Garfield” franchise, the characters are all reassuringly familiar. Garfield is just as grumpy and gluttonous as ever. His owner is still naively oblivious to Garfield’s manipulations, while Odie remains a cheerful, kind soul. Arguably, this time around, the loyal beagle gets more credit for his dependability—perhaps even from Garfield himself.
Pratt is an unexpected casting choice for Garfield, but there is a youthful guilelessness to his voice that suits the younger orange feline. Of course, Jackson expresses Vic’s street-smart hipness with instant credibility. Likewise, Rhames sounds appropriately big and gruff as the voice of Otto. That also makes “The Garfield Movie” an unlikely and strangely sweet “reunion” for the two “Pulp Fiction” co-stars. Cecily Strong sounds like she is impersonating the extreme Minnesota accent that Frances McDormand used when portraying Marge Gunderson in the 1996 film “Fargo,” but some parents might appreciate the eccentric irony of her villainous character, Marge, the dairy’s fierce security chief.
Even if “The Garfield Movie” delivers more drama than fans expect, it constantly serves up visual gags, built around familiar subjects (like Garfield’s favorite food, lasagna), that are often very funny. Clearly, Dindal and the trio of screenwriters understood the humor of creator Jim Davis’s beloved comic strips and the popular 1980s TV specials because they frequently replicate it. They just do so in a more frenetic (perhaps even overstuffed) narrative context. Regardless, John Debney’s lively score nicely suits the slapstick action.
This is indeed the Garfield that older viewers will remember, so parents can take their children to see it, confident they will not sit through any indoctrination. Watching Garfield heal his relationship with Vic also makes “The Garfield Movie” quite thematically appropriate for Father’s Day viewing as well. Arguably, kids could use more role models like Garfield, because he only wants to eat, sleep, and mind his own business rather than violently protest trendy social causes.
Perhaps more importantly, the grouchy tabby is still quite amusing. Recommended for family viewing.