Garfield has been cured of his depression. Good news for Garfield, I guess. Less so for anyone hoping his new animated film might in any way reflect Jim Davis’s original, misanthropic feline. As featured in what was once the world’s most widely syndicated comic strip, Garfield is supposed to provide pleasantly bland, sardonic humour for adults, while simultaneously introducing children to what would one day become their own perpetual state of ennui.
Garfield hates Mondays, because so does anyone engaged in the corporate death drive. He also loves lasagne, because melted cheese is one of the last, pure pleasures in life. And yet, in Hollywood’s latest attempt to cash in on the brand, Sony’s animated The Garfield Movie, he’s barely a curmudgeon. As voiced by Chris Pratt, he’s a shapeless, charmless box-ticking exercise of popular animation trends collided with moneymaking opportunities.
