The Garfield Movie: Frantic feline frolic

The Garfield Movie (2024) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, for action/peril

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.26.24

I had doubts.

 

A few years after its 1978 syndicated debut, the Garfield newspaper strip quickly devolved into a coldly calculated product, tediously recycling the same dozen bland gags for the next half-century. And still does so.

 

Otto, far right, goes over the precise details of an extremely improbable infiltration plan,
while (from left) Vic, Garfield and Odie listen with a blend of disbelief, fear and respect.

Creator Jim Davis even admitted that Garfield was intended as a “marketable character.”

Point being, very little on which to hang a full-length feature film.

 

This became blatantly obviously when 2004’s Garfield: The Movie and 2006’s Garfield: A Tale of Two Kittiesdeservedly bombed. Bill Murray’s signature laid-back smugness may have been perfect as the voice of Garfield, but the scripts and direction were strictly from hunger.

 

Expectations for this new Garfield Movie therefore weren’t high.

 

Happily, director Mark Dindal and his three writers — Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgrove and David Reynolds — have gone in an entirely different direction, by re-inventing the sarcastic orange feline’s tone and world. Granted, this Garfield still hates Mondays, is insufferably snide, and eats 75 times his body weight in lasagna, pizza and spaghetti. Every day. (And somehow doesn’t gain a pound.)

 

But Dindal and his writers have adjusted the character dynamics — a vast improvement — while delivering a hilariously frantic adventure paced more like a 101-minute Road Runner cartoon, complete with clever animation, snarky one-liners, well-timed reaction shots and all manner of droll pop-culture references and inside jokes.

 

The best transformation: Garfield’s yellow canine buddy Odie, no longer the dumb and hapless victim of the cat’s nasty pranks, has morphed into a wise, resourceful and impressively ingenious sidekick. And, unlike all the other characters in this wild romp, Odie remains Buster Keaton-style silent, often with a tolerantly stoic gaze that screams, “See what I have to put up with?!?”

 

After a prologue that introduces Garfield (enthusiastically voiced by Chris Pratt), Odie and their hapless owner, Jon Arbuckle (Nicholas Hoult), the saga gets underway with the unexpected appearance of Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), our feline hero’s long-estranged father.

 

This prompts a flashback sequence that reveals how Garfield, as an adorably cute kitten — who could resist those saucer-size eyes? — is adopted by Jon, after being abandoned by Vic.

 

Ghostbusters: Don't bother to call

Ghostbusters (2016) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for supernatural action and crude humor
By Derrick Bang 

It can be argued, with reasonable justification, that a film shouldn’t be remade unless one intends to deliver a new version that is superior to, or at least as good as, its predecessor.

The franchise busters behind this 21st century Ghostbusters failed in their mission.

With all of New York City under assault by legions of cranky phantasms, the Ghostbusters —
from left, Abby (Melissa McCarthy), Jillian (Kate McKinnon), Erin (Kristen Wiig) and Patty
(Leslie Jones) — suit up and ready their proton packs.

In every way that matters.

In theory, the gender switch is a delightful idea ... but only had it been accompanied by better material. It feels as if helmer Paul Feig and co-writer Katie Dippold believed that we’d be so charmed by the notion of women in those iconic uniforms, that we’d forgive the lackluster directing and clumsy, inadequate script. They didn’t even try.

The primary distinction involves tone. The 1984 original’s far-fetched premise notwithstanding, the guys took their work seriously; Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson gave solemn, even stern, line readings. That contrast — their earnestness, in the face of crazed circumstances — made the film hilarious. The humor was arch, not infantile.

The Aykroyd/Ramis script also was constructed with some care, and with adults in mind. In a film laden with great one-liners, none was funnier than Murray’s response to the possessed Sigourney Weaver, when she tried to seduce him by moaning, “I want you inside me.”

“No,” he replied, after a beat. “It sounds like you’ve got at least two or three people in there already.”

Nothing in this new film comes close to that level of sly humor; Feig’s preferred approach is the lazy, vulgar slapstick we see all too frequently these days. His cast most often behaves like the participants in a Saturday Night Live sketch, delivering isolated bits of (not very funny) business, with no thought to narrative continuity.

The 1984 film catered to all ages. This one’s for snickering, arrested adolescents. Which shouldn’t surprise us, given that Feig is the guy who, with Melissa McCarthy, inflicted us with The Heat and Spy.

And, as is the case with the recently released Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, too much of the dialogue here feels forced and ad-libbed; that’s particularly true of McCarthy, who frequently flails about as if she has forgotten her lines, and can’t come up with a reasonable substitute. She (and Feig?) apparently believe this to be “characterization.”

It feels like desperation.

The Meddler: Portrait of an endearing pest

The Meddler (2015) • View trailer 
4 stars. Rated PG-13, and rather harshly, for brief drug content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.20.16

Marnie Minervini can solve any problem. Any problem.

And for those foolish enough to insist they’ve haven’t any problems, Marnie will help diagnose some previously overlooked “issue,” and then suggest the best possible course of action. She’s never wrong, and she’s the first person to admit as much.

During a dinner already laden with emotional angst, Marnie (Susan Saranon, left) watches
warily after her daughter, Lori (Rose Byrne), sees her ex enter the restaurant with his
new girlfriend.

In fairness, that opinion is shared by most folks on the receiving end of her largess — medical, spiritual or financial — who marvel at Marnie’s cheerful altruism, while assuming that she must be the world’s best, most caring mother.

Except that daughter Lori knows the truth, as do we: that Marnie is a nosy, relentlessly hovering, knows-no-boundaries nuisance who, despite her kind-hearted intentions, is a two-legged 24/7 nightmare.

She’s also the genius creation of actress-turned-writer/director Lorene Scafaria, who has concocted this character from the heart: from the complicated dynamic that resulted when, after her father died, her mother sold the family home in New Jersey and moved 3,000 miles to the West Coast, in order to be closer to her daughter.

“And,” Scafaria explains, in her film’s press notes, “I’ve been raising her in Los Angeles ever since.”

Granted, Scafaria has embellished a bit, but still: No mother could hope for a better, funnier, more even-handed portrait of a widow trying to work her way through grief, while blundering amid the walls freshly erected by a daughter struggling to process her frustration and sense of loss.

Nor could we, as viewers, request or expect anybody better than Susan Sarandon, when it came to depicting this character. Sarandon is a revelation, both on camera and while delivering Marnie’s stream-of-consciousness narration. I’d call the latter a clever means of illustrating just how exasperated Lori (Rose Byrne) gets, as the victim of her mother’s constant, intrusive nagging ... but the voice-overs are too hilarious to be viewed as irritating.

Mind you, it’s more accurate to call Sarandon’s delivery wincingly funny: As this film progresses, few things become scarier than watching Marnie plunge into a fresh crowd of strangers, knowing — with an odd blend of dread and amused anticipation — that she’s about to target fresh prey.