Undescribable Perfection

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Garfield (Bill Murray) is the big-boned, lasagna loving, demanding cat belonging to Jon Arbuckle (Breckin Meyer). He hates to leave his cul-de-sac but Jon keeps bringing him to the vet Liz (Jennifer Love Hewitt). Jon has a crush on her since high school. She asks him to adopt Odie. Garfield doesn't like to share Jon's affections. Odie catches the attention of local TV morning personality Happy Chapman (Stephen Tobolowsky). Garfield gets pushed out of the house. Odie goes to accompany him but he locks Odie out. Odie wanders off and gets dognapped by Chapman who wants the dog to be a performance on his show. Bill Murray is the perfect Garfield. He's sarcastic and lovable. That goes for both Murray and Garfield. The story is light kids comedy. It's not terribly deep. It has the essence of the comic strip. This is for Garfield fans.

You have all been kids once!only because its for kids, that don't mean its a piece of trash!This movie is great... I love the comic- but OK! The movie might not be as grand as the comic, but I mean, it was still a great film. The plot might not be as great as the comic.So, basically, Jon adopts this little mutt,Jon calls him Odie, he has more talent than Garfield, this Happy Chapman guy kidnaps him, everyone is looking everywhere, Garfield goes to find him, falls into a truck full of lasagna, finally rescues Odie and everyone lives happily ever after.This is NOT a piece of sh*t.

The adventures of Garfield the cat were at a premium throughout the 80s and the mid 90s. Jim Davis's wry cartoon strips about the lazy, lasagne-loving couch potato hold a fond place in my childhood. What astonishes is how the character grew to such a phenomenon. How often does it happen that three panels about a fat, flabby tabby cat becomes not just a widely successful comic strip, but also grew to several animated specials, mass-produced merchandise, and Garfield dolls staring out the back windows of cars all over America?Which is why there seems something decidedly odd about a Garfield movie being made about ten years after the hype had died down - it feels like its come too late in the day (although it still grossed a blockbusting 200 million at the box-office). One suspects it wanted to compete with all of the other CGI talking animal movies that were greenlit following the mega-success of Babe, but unfortunately, judging from the finished product, it has more in common with the similarly misjudged Scooby-Doo rather than the delightful Babe.I must admit to not being a fan of the CGI talking animal genre. Babe may have been the one that got the ball rolling, but all the ones that followed in its wake studied its technology but not its thinking. While on the one hand Babe was wowing us with its effects, at the same time the filmmakers crafted a strong story being enacted by a cast of delightful animal characters. But all of its imitators are far more concerned with animals referencing things they couldn't possibly know about, e.g. the latest films and celebrities as well as anachronistic pop songs that only date the film that much quicker, etc. In some sense, Garfield could get away with that, since one of his favourite things to do is watch TV, when he's not sleeping the day away or eating his owner Jon Arbuckle out of house and home (and lasagne). But for a film about such a beloved character, it still emerges as a big disappointment.To its credit, Garfield doesn't come off as cringeworthy as most talking animal movies (just look to Bill Murray's fellow Ghostbuster Dan Aykroyd's Yogi Bear to see how bad Garfield could have been). The requisite film references and animal flatulence that have become sad staples of the genre are kept to a merciful minimum, and all of the characters are here, e.g. Garfield, Jon, Odie, Liz the vet, Nermal, even Pookie, Garfield's beloved teddy bear, etc. And when it comes to Garfield's lazy sarcasm, who better to play that than Bill Murray?But one wishes the lip-service had been worth it, because the story is nothing to get worked up about, only because we've seen it in so many other talking animal movies. Talking animals going on a big adventure is just Homeward Bound, while the villain of the film wanting Odie for nefarious purposes is 101 Dalmations. Even Garfield softening up is something Bill Murray has done before in Scrooged to Groundhog Day (the connection is more overt with GD's Stephen Tobolowsky cast as the villain Happy Chapman).If the plot seems slight, that's because of a fundamental flaw at the heart of the film. How do you turn a three-panel comic strip into a treatment worthy of a feature film? I'm not sure you can, and the film we get is evidence of that. The characters we know are there, but the plot is too threadbare for us to care for any of it. Breckin Meyer's Jon and Jennifer Love Hewitt's Liz bring nothing to the film, even though Liz is an unfeasibly sexy vet. The movie is just as idle as Garfield is.Also, where Garfield should have been the triumph of the film, the special effects are not. Although the other talking animals are done with conviction, the film's biggest special effect, Garfield himself, is a failure on all levels. Just like the then recent Scooby-Doo, he looks too cartoony. He never seems integrated with everyone else, which makes me wonder why he couldn't have been animated just like the other cats in the movie.The film does have an ace in the hole in Bill Murray. Although the script isn't worthy of a comedic actor of Murray's calibre, his dry, wry, laconic voice is perfectly suited to the character. This is hardly one of Murray's funniest performances but he can enliven any film just by showing up. Although he's reduced to a voice, his instantly recognisable sarcasm is the one true success of the movie.The talking animal movie is an extremely difficult thing to pull off. And while I would argue that there are worse, there are better ones too. Garfield falls into neither the former, nor the latter, and certainly without the presence of Bill Murray, Garfield would be a completely throwaway movie. And he's a character who deserves far better than that.

Garfield himself is not a likable character in this film. Since he's the main character, that's a problem. This movie gets 3 points from me because it made my child laugh twice. That's worth something. We will never watch it again, and I can't believe there is a sequel. Sequels are usually reserved for movies which were actually good.Let's summarize: This is the worst movie I have ever seen, and I am stunned that there was even a sequel. The only reason this film made any money at all is that parents are always willing to try any film out if their kids might like it. As soon as a child is old enough to understand the plot, they will not like it.