The movie gets mildly amusing as it recreates the kind of vent-crawling, security guard-avoiding heist in the dairy along to the theme from Mission: Impossible and that’s largely because the gang is being directed by a bull voiced by Ving Rhames, a veteran of that franchise. There are also nods to Top Gun: “I do my own stunts,” Garfield says. “Me and Tom Cruise.”
The script - by Paul A Kaplan, Mark Torgove and David Reynolds - grounds the movie firmly in today, with Garfield using food delivery phone apps and Bluetooth, watching Catflix and characters declaring that they are “self-actualised”. There’s also some pretty awkward product placement, like for Olive Garden, that may not send the message they wanted.
This is the part when we talk about food abuse. Garfield has a bit of a problem on this front, and the filmmakers more than lean into it. Thousands of pounds of junk food get inhaled by the tabby, but not salad. Heaven is described as an “all-you-can-eat buffet in the sky” and cheese is Garfield’s “love language.” It’s the laziest kind of writing.
There’s a mini Ted Lasso reunion when Hannah Waddingham (playing a psychotic gang leader) and Brett Goldstein (as her henchman) appear, while Snoop Dogg has a cameo as the voice of a one-eyed cat and offers a song that runs over the credits.
The animation is pretty great - the backgrounds, at least. Ladders show rust and forests are lush, but then the main characters are a step or two less realised, more cartoonish. Jim Davis, who created Garfield, is an executive producer so he must be okay with all of this, a forgettable, unfunny animated slog. At one point, Garfield says “Bury me in cheese” and that seems a fitting final resting place for this cat’s film career.
The Garfield Movie, a Columbia Pictures release that opens in movie theatres on Thursday, is rated G.
Running time: 101 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.
