neumu [ cinematronic ]




	Garfield: The Movie
	Peter Hewitt Bill Murray, Breckin Meyer, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Stephen Tobolowsky 2004		What hairball has Hollywood puked up here? Don't look now (literally), but the long-running, visually pedestrian, textually moronic, yet somehow popular cartoon strip "Garfield," a daily monument to banal, repetitive tedium, finally spawned a feature-length film. Oh, yes. Garfield — fat, lazy, smart-alecky, lasagna-loving, dog-baiting, orange-striped feline pet of the bug-eyed, dateless nerd-boy Jon Arbuckle — is the hero of his own motion picture quasi-comedy, a dull mix of (barely) live action and (unappealing) computer animation. In the spirit of the newspaper strip, "Garfield: The Movie" is embarrassingly awful for all concerned, including the hapless performers and anyone unlucky enough to watch it. How bad is it? Even cat lovers will be hard-pressed to stomach it, and it fritters away the sizeable talents of Bill Murray, whose glib, cranky vocal stylings enunciate the inner thoughts of an annoying 3-D animated Garfield. The story, such as it is: Jon, played by the bland Breckin Meyer, falls for cute veterinarian Liz, played by an ineffectual Jennifer Love Hewitt. With Liz's encouragement (and to Garfield's chagrin), Jon adopts the hyperactive canine Odie, who is then dog-napped by an evil animal trainer. Garfield is, jarringly, a digital 'toon opposite real people and a real dog; the blend is as misbegotten as the script. It's kitty litter.