Garfield: The Movie

[ScarHades]

I saw this film at the Camperdown Cinema in Dundee in the summer of 2004 because I loved Garfield when I was a kid and I think this is the most funniest film I've ever seen. I love the movie.

My dad got me the video of the film for Christmas in 2004, so I've had it for nearly 11 years now.

The most funniest part for me was when Garfield fell from the Telegraph Tower screaming and crashed through the roof of a lasagne van a lasgane flies everywhere. I also laughed when he burped whilst watching TV eating popcorn before rescuing Odie and when he burped after drinking the milk whilst playing astronauts with Nermal and when he jumps on Jon in bed and Jon shouts "Garfield!"

The most angriest moment for me is when he tries to get Jon to watch Odie on the TV and Jon sulks "Garfield, I'm not in the mood.", switches off the TV, throws the remote on the table and sulks off.

The most saddest moment for me was when Jon locked Garfield outside as he thought Garfield ruined his house.

I hate Luca and Happy Chapman. Garfield is my favourite and Arlene is my 2nd favourite.

My favourite quote is when Garfield sighs and Jon says "She's so beautiful." and my favourite by Garfield "Er, Mr Pathetic, you've had a crush on her since high school." So that's where I first heard the term "have a crush" on someone.

I saw the 2nd movie at Camperdown cinema when it was released too and it wasn't as good as the first. But the first was the best.

[TheLionPrince]

I loved Garfield, too, when I was ten years old. I bought (with my parents' money) a DVD with three Garfield specials, and fell in love with Garfield. When I learned of the movie, I begged my mother to see it. I saw it at the defunct Broadmoor Theater with the Scrat short, Gone Nutty, playing before the movie started. Overall, as a kid, I enjoyed the movie, though I wondered why the filmmakers decided they used a real dog for Odie, and not have him be a computer-generated dog. The dog had a passing resemblance to Odie in the original cartoons, so I think I gave it a pass.

Looking at it later, the movie hasn't aged well. Jennifer Love-Hewitt is a wonderful actress, but the writing for Dr. Liz was poor. In the comics, Liz is cynical and has a deadpan appearance, not the "girl next door" type as depicted in the movie. I cringe when Garfield breaks the fourth wall and says "Got milk?" And the villain hates lasagna, which is the exact opposite of Garfield's love for it, but it's so irrelevant to the story and never mentioned again. The CGI effects for Garfield hasn't aged well. A Tale of Two Kitties was fun, but it's not that much of an improvement.

[Ultra Fox]

This movie is legendarily terrible. Same with the sequel. Absolute garbage.

[Gaze]

i was ALL ABOUT garfield when i was in elementary school. i had a huge garfield collection (right alongside my lion king collection). so naturally i was pretty into the live-action garfield movie when it came out. i remember feeling irritated @ the use of live action animals tho, and at how they used a seal point cat to play Nermal instead of a gray tabby....COME ON PPL......

anyway, haven't seen that movie in years but im guessing that now, in the modern age, it'd be a pretty good piece of comedy. like, a live action dude hangin out w/ a fat CGI cat voiced by bill murray. sounds gr8 I should watch it. i dont think any movie can be truly classified as "absolute garbage" unless it actually has 0 entertainment value, but most bad movies are bad enough to have entertainment value yknow

this thread made me feel nostalgic though and i am genuinely glad that you love Garfield, OP. i mean it

[Ultra Fox]

[quote="Sadiki"]i dont think any movie can be truly classified as "absolute garbage" unless it actually has 0 entertainment value, but most bad movies are bad enough to have entertainment value yknow[/quote]
This movie has no entertainment value.

Not even for how bad it is. It's a painful kind of bad. Not enjoyably so like The Room or something.

[Gaze]

[quote="Ultra Fox"]This movie has no entertainment value.

Not even for how bad it is. It's a painful kind of bad. Not enjoyably so like The Room or something.[/quote]
haha, sorry, I'm just inevitably entertained by anything containing bad CGI and especially anything containing Garfield

actually, bad talking animal movies in general might be a fav genre of mine

[Ultra Fox]

Well, I can see why you may find it enjoyably bad then. I just PERSONALLY found it unbearable.

The CG is bad, but I think there are movies from the same era with even worse CG that're more entertaining. Garfield lacks any actors just not giving a sh** in the sense that they just make their performance as cheesy and hilariously bad as possible- a staple of many enjoyably bad movies.

[Myerskera]

I myself liked the series better of course though the movie had nothing to do with it but on the comic book itself, which I dont care for anyway. I would rather watch the series that most of us are used to & have no knowledge of the comic book.

[Squeely]

[quote="Myerskera"]I would rather watch the series that most of us are used to & have no knowledge of the comic book.[/quote] Garfield and Friends captures the feel of the original comics perfectly. The characters are directly lifted from book to screen without losing a thing. Garfield and Friends accomplished this so well that the longer Sunday strips were copied into the show exactly, as "Quickies", and fit right in.

I found this film to be a dull, thoughtless retread of Here Comes Garfield that lacked most of what gave Garfield its charm. Jon is not nearly enough of a dweeb here, the actor they got was too handsome and didn't play up Jon's complete-dork personality at all. Liz is not enough of a sarcastic snarker and is far too much of the nicey, girl-next-door type. I've not read 100% of the comic (I've read the majority of the original strips throughout the 70s and 80s but not much that got made later) so perhaps Liz and Jon did date at some point, but it still feels like a betrayal for the two to end up together here. It just happens too easily.

Arlene is barely in it so I guess her character was fine, though completely sidelined. They ruined Nermal completely. He does nothing here to annoy Garfield, and without seeing Nermal smugly rub in how cute he is and Garfield get annoyed at everyone fawning over him, it doesn't make sense that Garfield would rig a device just to torture Nermal. I'm also confused as to why a Siamese was chosen over a gray tabby. Surely the latter would be easier to get ahold of? I know Nermal was a model, so I guess I can see why they'd choose a breed that's far more rare than your standard tabby... But they should have explained that. Admittedly, I haven't seen this film in a long time, but I don't remember it mentioning Nermal's modelling career at all. Which is a glaring flaw, as it probably would have taken five minutes at most to go over it. Or else, it could have cut Nermal entirely and not much would have been lost. A film such as this shouldn't need to rely on prior knowledge from the comics or Garfield and Friends, as it was obviously more intended for a young audience than those who grew up with Garfield.

Garfield as the only CG animal feels very out-of-place here. I'm not sure why they didn't either A) get a real-life orange tabby to play him, or B) have the rest of the animals be CG as well. It feels very off to have Garfield be the only character to retain the big-eyed style, and while I feel it would have been a terrible idea to try and use that style on humans, it just doesn't work having Garfield as literally the only animal that looks like that. With a different script, perhaps it would have stuck out less... But they have Odie become a sensation because he hops around on two legs. Meanwhile the alien-cat hybrid that dances far more like a human and knows how to watch TV, down to changing the channels? No media attention brought to him. In the strip as well as Garfield and Friends, animals other than Garfield constantly did humanlike stuff. It was just the quirky world they lived in. Here, it's far more confusing than it should be.

Garfield himself feels watered-down, though he is true to the character. It's a big ol' shame that Bill Murray wasn't given a good script to work with, as he makes an okay Garfield here, and could so easily have made a great Garfield had better material been given. Odie... is a dog. I wouldn't really say they ruined his character or anything since it rarely went beyond that, though a real-life dog is far less of the slobbery annoyance with a good heart that the true Odie of the comics and show is. Points for finding a dog that resembles Odie probably as much as a real-life dog can, I guess. The dancing thing is kind of baffling because as far as I recall, Odie never got famous for dancing in the source material. It gives the weaksauce villain motivation to kidnap Odie... but was the motivation really that necessary? Just have him be an evil guy who kidnaps animals, or else, your typical dogcatcher. It's not like other kids' films released within a decade of the Garfield movie didn't have the same sort of thing.

In conclusion, Garfield: The Movie offers little in the way of the iconic and lovable characters and just feels very bland and safey. Do yourself a favor and watch the superior version of this story, told in roughly 1/5 of the time, too!

[Sigurd]

I liked it when it came out. Now I think it is quite bad. It is not catastrophic, though, and there's far worse out there