The Last Movies You Saw... and What You Thought Of them!

Now, with the positives out of the way, let's get on to the negatives.

My first major problem with the movie is that the plot of the movie feels unoriginal and has been done way better in a lot of older animated movies. The heist plot alone feels like a pale shadow of Chicken Run (2000), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), and The Bad Guys (2022). While I can excuse unoriginality as long as the set-up can provide for exciting action scenes, here I could easily predict what would happen next (I knew that Jinx was going to backstab Garfield, Odie, and Vic at some point) and the action scenes felt so safe because of the lack of tension and how the characters quickly shake off anything the farm throws at them. It also doesn't help that the movie has tendency to focus way more on the physical comedy that happens to Garfield instead of giving the characters any actual character development, especially in the case between Garfield and Vic, whose bonding felt arbitrary and hollow.


The second major problem I have with the movie is that the movie's original characters take up way more screen time than any of the established Garfield cast (with the exceptions of Garfield and Odie). This wouldn't be such a bad problem if the movie's original characters were actually interesting to watch and root for. Alas, this isn't the case. Vic to me was a terrible father to Garfield in the movie's opening scene and a flashback later from his POV (he actually didn't mean to abandon Garfield because he was trying to find food for him in a dumpster, but he found out that Jon adopted Garfield and decided to secretly watch him at Jon's house for five years) wasn't enough to make me sympathetic towards him. Vic could have easily cleared up things for Garfield much quicker had he simply wrote a note to him saying that "oh, I didn't mean to abandon you back in the dumpster, but I do want you to enjoy the normal life you have with Jon right now", but no, he decides to spy on him for five years without clearing things up with him and his criminal lifestyle led Garfield and Odie into this mess in the first place.
The other original characters the movie has to offer aren't much better either. You have Jinx as the crazy unstable cat who is very obviously going to be the villain of the movie judging by her mannerisms and doesn't even try to attempt to hide the fact that she is evil, her henchmen barely have any characterization outside of being dumb and stupid, and the bull Otto and the cow Ethel have the predictable "star-crossed lovers" story which would end with them reuniting and be happy together. Otto and Ethel's subplot was so forgettable to the point that I forgot that it was even a part of the heist to begin with.


My third and final problem with the movie (as echoed in a lot of negative reviews of the movie) is that it barely feels like a Garfield movie. While I can understand the limitations of adapting a character like Garfield to feature-length movies (as his main characteristics are to be lazy, eat a lot of lasagna, and snark at his owner Jon and his friend Odie), I feel the filmmakers went too far by putting him in heist movie where he is least suited to work in. As a result of the movie's animal heist theme, Jon, one of the central characters of the franchise, barely gets anything to do besides adopting Garfield and Odie and worry about them throughout the entire movie when they get kidnapped. Almost all of the dry wit that Garfield is known for feels missing here, and instead feels like it was replaced by forced physical comedy that barely made me laugh besides a few mild chuckles at best. Garfield's well-known cast of supporting characters like Liz (Jon's girlfriend), Nermal, and Arlene are nothing more than cameos at best (and even then, Arlene doesn't appear in this movie at all). If you took out all of the Garfield references and characters, this would just be a generic kids heist movie.

In the end, The Garfield Movie is a disappointment that never rises being beyond mediocre and familiar. It is a movie that is mostly devoid of laughs and that its tone is all over the place, from wanting to be funny with Garfield's new life with Jon and then sad and sentimental for the moments between Garfield and Vic. These tones I felt didn't mix very well together, and combined with subpar storytelling as a result of its very fast pacing that barely allows Garfield's bond with either Jon or Vic to be explored more, left little impact on me besides the opening scene. The fact that it brings nothing new to the table says a lot about how forgettable this movie is.

If you want an animated comic strip movie that is much more faithful to the comics and is a very enjoyable and heartfelt movie, go watch the The Peanuts Movie (2015) instead.

I just saw IF the other day! I thought it was fun, I'm a big sucker for live action/CGI sidekick movies like this. They're like, mesmerizing to me.

I loved Blossom, she's about the only reason I really wanted to go see it XD

So cute!!