Garfield is back and bigger than ever - film review

Garfield, that lazy, lasagna-loving cat, is back, in The Garfield Movie, which opened throughout Israel this week, and this ferociously selfish feline may be just the character we need to spend a couple of hours with right now.

The movie, which did not have advance screenings prior to press time, is the latest screen portrayal of the surly pet.

Those who like to take their children to English-language movies rather than dubbed versions of animated movies are in luck, because this is being released in theaters in two versions, one dubbed into Hebrew and one in English with Hebrew titles, probably because Garfield movies tend to appeal to adults as well as kids.

There’s something liberating and almost politically incorrect about seeing a character as gluttonous, lazy, and bossy as Garfield. Other than James Bond when he’s not on a mission, what character gets to do what he wants to do all day, every day? Right, only Garfield.

This time, sadly, Bill Murray, who voiced the cantankerous cat in the 2004 Garfield movie and in 2006’s Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, is not around. Murray’s vaguely hostile hipster persona was perfect for the character. This time, Chris Pratt voices a slightly less cynical, slightly more energetic-sounding Garfield.

The new film is all animated, unlike the previous two, in which Garfield was animated and digitally inserted into live-action scenes.

The plot

We learn how Jon Arbuckle (Nicholas Hoult, who made his big-screen debut over 20 years ago, playing the teen who befriends Hugh Grant in About a Boy) first met his very prideful pet. Jon was having a slice of pizza in a restaurant when he saw Garfield, then a kitten, looking pitiful outside. Jon invited him in, and Garfield consumed the pizza and everything not nailed down.

This film features the usual Garfield antics, but then gets into a plot that tells the story of how Garfield gets back in touch with his father, a scruffy alley cat named Vic, voiced by Samuel L. Jackson, of Pulp Fiction and so many other movies.

“I’m mixed up with some bad cats, and I need your help,” says Vic.

Garfield replies, “I haven’t seen you for years, and when I do, you pull me into a life of crime.”

Vic asks if he has ever jumped a train, to which Garfield responds, “I’ve never jumped.”

Vic is being blackmailed by his former associate, Jinx (Hannah Waddington of Ted Lasso), and he wants to pay her to leave him alone so he can concentrate on his next heist: a large-scale robbery of Lactose Farms, after which he promises they will be set for life.

Liz, Jon’s sometime girlfriend and Garfield’s veterinarian, is played by Dev Joshi. Ving Rhames (who played Jackson’s gangster boss in Pulp Fiction) and Cecily Strong of SNL portray characters who get mixed up in the heist, while rapper Snoop Dog voices a character called Snoop Cat.

If you’d like to see the older versions of Garfield, you can watch The Garfield Show, a series from about 15 years ago, on Netflix. The two Bill Murray movies are available on Disney+ and Apple TV+.

Garfield started out as a comic strip, created by Jim Davis, that was published in an Indiana newspaper in the late ’70s and was originally called Jon.

Raised on an Indiana farm with 25 cats, Davis later worked in advertising and created the comic strip, thinking at first that readers would connect to stories of the nebbishy Jon, but everyone loved Garfield so much that he quickly had to change the name and the focus of the comic, admitting that Garfield had turned out to be his boss. Soon, the cartoon was syndicated in thousands of newspapers and now is also available online at Garfield.com/.

Davis attributes some of its success to the fact that it is apolitical. “My grasp of politics isn’t strong,” he admitted in an interview.

While the movies always have a fairly complicated plot, children seeing them tend to respond most strongly to the silly stuff, like Jon giving the scowling Garfield a bath and blow-drying his fur. And there looks to be enough of that here to keep them amused.