The Garfield Movie Trailer Sounds Upbeat

Movies

Lock up your lasagna because Garfield is back. Sony released a trailer for the newest cinematic adaptation of Jim Davis’ classic comic strip, The Garfield Movie. The new film shows how Jon Arbuckle found Garfield as a kitten and took him in and how an adult Garfield meets his father and goes on an adventure with Odie in tow. Chris Pratt stars as Garfield, with Nicholas Hoult, Hannah Waddingham, Ving Rhames, Cecily Strong, and Samuel L. Jackson in supporting roles. Directed by Mark Dindal (Chicken Little, The Emperor’s New Groove, Cat’s Don’t Dance), The Garfield Movie will arrive in theaters on May 24, 2024, and you can see the trailer below:

So, Chris Pratt is playing another famous animated character with a distinct voice? He was better than I thought he’d be  in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, but based on the Garfield Movie trailer, his performance in this one is a bit more mixed. It isn’t terrible, and at times, he sounds a lot like Garfield should sound, but at others, it’s clearly Pratt. Part of the problem isn’t with him, though; Garfield is a little too cheerful for much of the trailer when he should be cynical, sardonic, and sarcastic. (As bad as the last movie adaptation was supposed to be, casting Bill Murray as Garfield was genius.) The opening scenes show a touching vignette where we see how Jon and Garfield found each other, and this works because we know (or assume) it’ll be belied by the real Garfield once he’s in Jon’s life. There are traces of that in the trailer, and a few lines made me laugh (“I have never jumped”), but it needs to be at least the bulk of Garfield’s personality in the movie. This is what should contrast him with his father, who, it seems, has an outsized, larger-than-life attitude.

But maybe this is why Garfield isn’t a character that’s well-suited for a movie; he’s not an adventurer, and he doesn’t really do anything aside from eat and crack wise. The humor in the Garfield comics comes from him observing mundane situations, bothering people (or animals) for fun, or eating. For a movie, especially an animated one aimed at kids, something big has to happen. How well they’re able to throw Garfield into that will determine how good The Garfield Movie is, at least as an adaptation. The animation looks good, and it’s certainly closer to Jim Davis’ creation than the 2004 film and its sequel. We’ll see, I suppose, but this trailer mostly made me think I should track down some of those Garfield comic strip collections I used to have.