Film Review — The Garfield Movie
An unfunny, slapdash, product placement-infested bore
Lately, I despair at the low quality of mainstream Hollywood animated fare. Disney hit all-time lows with the likes of Wish (2023) and Strange World (2022). Dreamworks bludgeoned us with the entirely superfluous Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024), and Illumination’s Migration (2023) was barely passable. Pixar’s Elemental (2023) was a bit more passable, but Lightyear (2022) proved woeful. Family audiences have fared little better with live action, with only this year’s IF proving intermittently effective. Children deserve better, dammit. When are we going to see another masterpiece like Mary Poppins (1964), E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Toy Story (1995), or Beauty and the Beast (1991)?
Unfortunately, The Garfield Movie is another endurance test that some wretched corporate algorithm has dreamed up and demanded its Sony studio executive underlings put together. It’s a creative vacuum of a film; an abyss of product placement pretending to be inspired by Jim Davis’s comic strip. Instead of listening to Bill Murray’s regrets about appearing in ill-advised previous movie iterations of the titular sarcastic cat (see Zombieland (2009) for more on that), director Mark Dindal and his animators have sold their souls to the Devil to craft this festering sore masquerading as a legitimate story…
