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Chris Pratt's 'Garfield': A Plateful of Lasagna, Laughs, and Love


Chris Pratt's latest voice-acting venture as the leading lazy cat we know and love as Garfield was very humorous, and it had a few good twists to add more to the one-dimensional character. In addition to said twists, there were funny characters voiced by Samuel L. Jackson and Ving Rhames.

'The Garfield Movie' began showing Garfield's abandonment as a kitten, adopted by Jon Arbuckle (voiced by Nicholas Hoult, Beast from 'X-Men: First Class'), and modernizing his slacker behavior with food drone delivery and Netflix. But his routine, mundane albeit happy life took a change for the worse and better when his birth father, Vic, voiced by Jackson, gets into some trouble and needs his son's help.

The film began as funny with Garfield's usual overeating lasagna and allusion to past Garfield media, such as his birthplace in Mamma Leoni's restaurant and former voice actor Lorenzo Music. Between the poignant piano music score by John Debney and Garfield trying to sort out his family issues, the movie seemed like director Mark Dindal's 'Chicken Little' all over again, just without aliens. On the bright side, it shows Garfield in a better light than just being sloth-like. 

Besides Pratt being comical in his role of Garfield, Jackson and Rhames were funny as their respective characters of Vic and Otto the Bull. Jackson as Vic was amusing in acting like a smooth-talking con man and trying to bring the deeper animal out of Garfield. Their complex working relationship seemed reminiscent of Miles Morales and Peter B. Parker from 'Into the Spider-Verse.' As for Rhames, his character of Otto was like a tough trainer for Garfield when (spoiler alert) he tried to prep him and Vic for a team heist. It was still funny how even in his somber mood, he acted like a foil to the cats and a nod to Rhames' work in 'Mission: Impossible.'

Because it was a higher pitch than I was used to, I couldn't really recognize Hoult as Jon Arbuckle. And Harvey Guillén as Odie wasn't very recognizable to me, either. But in Odie's case, he proved his worth in getting Garfield and Odie to heal their fractured relationship with a little time-out.

'The Garfield Movie' was like 'Open Season', in that Garfield was too domesticated and had a rough time embracing life on the wild side. One really laughable part was his catapulting trip gone wrong when he and Vic planned the heist. Other scenes reminded me of 'Daxter', 'Cars', and 'Toy Story 3'. While I said there was poignant piano music and family drama, it wasn't all sad once I saw Garfield and Vic patch things up, along with Garfield getting some action in him.

To summarize, 'The Garfield Movie' was a plateful of lasagna, laughs, and love. It had some parts I didn't expect, but I still enjoyed the movie. If you want a good "ha-ha" moment and more, go watch 'The Garfield Movie.'

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