The Garfield Movie (2024)

The Garfield Movie (2024)

 3/10

Starring          

Chris Pratt

Samuel L. Jackson

Hannah Waddingham

Ving Rhames

 

Directed by Mark Dindal

 

I have fond memories of the 2004 Garfield: The Movie. That movie starred Bill Murray (as the voice of Garfield), Breckin Meyer as Jon and Jennifer Love Hewitt as Liz, Jon’s love interest. That movie was live action with Garfield being CGI. This movie on the other hand is complete animation. Now, watching this new one, I was hopeful that I would like it. I will be honest, I have not given the 20-year-old Garfield movie a rewatch, so I do not know how I will feel seeing it now, but this one did not give me the same vibe as that one did, when I saw it 20 years ago.

This movie played like it was meant for children, so I will regard it as so. Because for me, other than Odie everyone else in the movie was a bore.

The plot is boring, as it plays to us as a reunion movie between Garfield and his father Vic, by doing this the movie just crosses all the Ts and dots the Is from cliché-r-us. Not playing anything new, just giving us the same old stories of parent and child, separated at birth. You know those Hollywood stories, where both now must overcome a hurdle to survive and to achieve this, they must overcome the past and work together.

The plot starts with us meeting Garfield, he is enjoying his lazy life, when he and Odie gets kidnapped by Jinx and her crew. Jinx used to be part of Vic’s crewmember as they go about committing crime years ago.

Jinx got captured during one of their heists, and wants revenge on Vic, because she believes Vic did not do enough to save her. She kidnapped Garfield and wants both he and Vic to work together to get her a quart of milk for everyday she spent locked up, which was more than four years. They must do this, or else Jinx’s goon will be set on them. So, the two go out to fulfil this new heist, and we see them struggle to work together because Garfield is holding on to the past of being abandoned by his father, and Vic is struggling to explain to Garfield that things did not play out the way he thinks it did. You will need to see the whole movie to see how they get on.

If you can stomach the boredom of this movie, then maybe you can enjoy it, if like me, you cannot stand boring movies with no glimpse of trying to do anything new, then I will advise you to stay away from this movie.

All that said, the movie was a great commercial success in the box office, so I will not be surprised if a part two is already being drafted to be made.