Garfield: The Movie writers Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow put themselves in a bind with their 2004 adaptation of Jim Davis’ classic comic strip. Like most Sunday comics, Davis’ is really geared toward adults, not children–emphasizing Jon’s pathetic attempts at womanizing, Odie’s mindlessness and Garfield’s morbid self-absorption. The script, based on Davis’ 1982 TV special Here Comes Garfield, seems on the one hand to want to be a hero-saves-the-day kiddie flick, and on the other to appeal to the adult fans of the original comic about the amoral, definitely not child-friendly cat.
Their solution reads is as if they wrote the first half for the fans, the second for the tots. The beginning is largely a series of pegs for running gags from the comic. Important exposition does happen here, but gets overshadowed by the predictable inside jokes, the one-liners about lasagna and Garfield’s mean-spirited antics–all toned down by the need to keep it nicey-nice for the kids.
Excellent casting can’t make up for the writing. I initially didn’t recognize Breckin Meyer as the face that played skater-punk Travis Birkenstock in Clueless (1995), which I generally take as a sign of ability in an actor. He does a great job with what little the writers give him, portraying lonely, socially inept pet owner Jon Arbuckle. Arbuckle uses Garfield as an excuse to see beautiful veterinarian, Liz (Jennifer Love Hewitt). Liz asks Jon to adopt a new puppy, Odie. But when smarmy TV show host Happy Chapman (Stephen Tobolowsky; Sneakers) sees Odie’s talent for entertaining (“dancing” on his hind legs) he figures it’s his ticket to the big time and contrives to dognap the pooch. In the second half of the film, Garfield, a CGI animation with the voice of Bill Murray (a wasted stroke of casting genius), ceases to be recognizably Garfield in spirit, uncharacteristically throwing rotten to the wind in favor of a quest to rescue the missing dog.
Nor does the well-crafted animation make up for the writing. Use of CGI to give human-like facial expressions to animals used to be nothing short of phantasmagoric in its early uses in pet food ads. Animators have thankfully learned to tone it down a bit, resulting in a more subtle effect here. The initial shock of a completely CGI Garfield standing next to live action animals and people wears off quickly; obvious care was put into rendering the cat’s ungainly movements with stylized verisimilitude.
Nor do the competent music and directing outweigh the writing problems. Christophe Beck’s score is post-John Williams (which means post-Prokofiev) wallpaper, but effectively so. Peter Hewitt’s directing is workaday–it looks as if it was really made with the television screen in mind, but is free of major faults.
The script shows by its absence the value that a single, unified premise brings to a film. The characterizations are confused and contradictory. The fat cat’s appeals to the value of friendship in the second half ring hollow, coming as they do from him. “Now’s not the time for a plate of meatloaf–now’s the time for a plate of courage,” he quips in a lame excuse for his random change of heart from unsympathetic antihero to self-sacrificing Walt Disney cat. The script comes off as one written by committee as, in effect, it was. Though there are some nice touches and funny moments, by trying to fence-sit between being an adult homage to Jim Davis’ original and a babysitter film for kids, the result winds up insulting to fans of the former and dully inappropriate for the latter.
Evans Winner
Seattle Washington
December, 2004References:
The Internet Movie Database, http://imdb.com; entries on Joel Cohen, Garfield (2004), Here Comes Garfield, Breckin Meyer, Alec Sokolow, Stephen Tobolowsky.