The Garfield Movie, as much a reboot of the movie franchise as an ongoing extension of the newspaper cartoon.
What is a newspaper cartoon, you ask?
Here is the version of Garfield in the new movie, as being installed on a billboard on the Sunset Strip, in 3 dimensions, with fur.
Garfield: The Movie hit the movies first in 2004, with Bill Murray voicing the cat. $73 million domestic after a $22 million opening. Over $200m worldwide.
Released in 2006, the sequel, Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties, had troubles with the returning Murray, grossed only $28 million domestic, while mirroring pretty much the same gross as the first film internationally ($115m).
Critics, as is the norm, especially for family movies, meant nothing. The 1st film has a 14% on Rotten Tomatoes and the 2nd has a 12%.
18 years later, it is time for The Garfield Movie. The Rotten Tomatoes score is 46%. Watch those critics flex those muscles… and no one caring!!! Maybe it is a surprise, if this number holds, that it is a significant improvement on the last generation of these films.
Unlike the majority of my critical colleagues, I will not go negative on The Garfield Movie. My main objection to the film is that while I quite like Chris Pratt, regardless of his personal politics, his voice is not distinctive. He is a mugger and a physical comedian.
The original TV voice of Garfield was Lorenzo Music, who was also the voice of “Carlton, Your Doorman” on Rhoda, the Mary Tyler Moore spin-off. (Music was also the very funny writer/producer of the series.) Droll. There is a background homage to Music early in the film.
My first thought watching the film was that I would have preferred Nick Offerman doing the voice. Or Paul Rudd. Or Seth Rogen. Or Jeff Bridges! Or Denzel Washington. Or Keanu. Or Sam Rockwell. There are many great options who have distinctive voices. Pratt is a good actor and a funny guy… but in spite of Mario, he is just not that interesting as a voice actor.
On the other hand, the film really doesn’t want to lean into celebrity voices, even though they are voicing the film. Sam Jackson doesn’t sound very Sam Jackson. Hannah Waddingham doesn’t offer any of her Ted Lasso styles. So maybe I just have to accept that as director Mark Dindal’s choice. (Dindal has been in animation director’s jail for a long time since 2005’s Chicken Little… or maybe he just dropped out for a long while… no sign of many other credits in these last 19 years… don’t want to assume too much.)
The movie itself… is fine. It opens with what seems a quizzical “young Garfield” bit. Then it dances through the expected Garfield narratives pretty quickly. And then it moves on to a story that is not classic Garfield… his abandonment by his father. So of course, the rest of the movie is about bringing him and his father back together, using a heist/gang/threatening storyline as the driver of the story.
It’s a little weird as a Garfield movie. But it gets the fat cat off his ass and out of that house. Smart. And the ride is so gentle and silly, almost a parody of Mission: Impossible movies, that it’s like eating a dessert that you don’t really like that much… but keep eating because it is pleasant. 101 minutes of vanilla pudding.
Nothing blew me away. But none of it hurt for a second. There were some laughs. Lots of eating things larger than the characters. One dog character that seemed stolen directly out of the Tim Burton library. Another that was pure Termite Terrace, but with a British accent. Etc.
It’s a movie for kids… under 10, mostly. But it won’t hurt the adults taking them to the movies. It’s not Paw Patrol, which I used to be able to manage when my kid was 5, but would make me (and most people of a 2-digit age) very unhappy if forced to watch it in a theater today.
And that is what struck me at some point mid-movie. Who knows how Garfield, not exactly super-hot in the current culture, will open? The industry thinks it’s look at around a $25 million 3-day, which would be the best of the franchise. If IF drops only 25% from its opening weekend, The Garfield Movie would be in a close race amongst family films in this first segment of the summer (both behind Furiosa).
Garfield is already beating IF internationally, with $50 million banked and IF collecting about half of that.
Objectively, IF is a better, more ambitious, richer movie. But subjectively, The Garfield Movie is not dark the way IF is and could well be more palatable for family audiences over the next 4 weekends before 800-lb gorilla Inside Out 2 comes out. But even then, IF will likely be plowed over by Inside Out 2… but Garfield will skew younger and as IO2 takes our heroine into puberty, Garfield may be a place that parents of under-8s still prefer for multiple viewings.
I could just plain be wrong. But I think there is a real chance that, by the end of June, The Garfield Movie outgrosses IF domestically as the only movie for little kids. It is all but assured of winning the fight internationally.
And then, Despicable Me 4 lands, a 1600-lb gorilla for families.
Critics - real and not so real - hate it, it seems. But this is the kind of modest hit that the movie theaters need a lot more of in order to keep rebuilding their revenue levels. Give us one of these every 4 months - plus the big animated hits - and it would be a happy think for the entire industry, no matter what critics think.
Until tomorrow…
I would love to see new animated "Garfield," but it works better on television.