Peter Hewitt
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Connections, in both directions
Highlights include a dance-off between Garfield and Odie to a Black-Eyed Peas song, a wild ride through airducts and stairs as Garfield tries to find Odie, and some just-to-keep-the-parents-awake references to Jerry Maguire, Apocalypse Now, Elvis, Billy Joel, and even Shakespeare's Henry V.
Unsure what audience to play to, the writers throw in a little bit of everything, from ho-hum slapstick to bad puns to an "Apocalypse Now" reference that's sure to delight the 8-year-old Francis Ford Coppola aficionados in the audience.
“Garfield” is being released with a short cartoon featuring Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel from “Ice Age,” called “Gone Nutty” that is an entertaining diversion an homage to the little critter’s acorns.
If you go to Garfield: The Movie, you'll also get to see ''Gone Nutty,'' a digitally animated 2002 short from the creators of ''Ice Age.''
Small wonder that most viewers will find considerably more laughs in the brief "Gone Nutty" cartoon (starring the scheming Scrat of "Ice Age" fame) that precedes "Garfield" than they'll get from the feature itself.
You might think that advances in technology might have improved on the conversing camels from 1942's Road to Morocco and those were deliberately cartoonish but you'll find no evidence of progress here.
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
influenced Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991)
Themes Visuals
This clash-of-cultures gag keeps escalating it's The Seventh Seal meets The Naked Gun.
The afterlife sequences are by far the most inventive, reaching a hilarious peak with a sendup of, of all things, Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal."
The funniest thing that happens to them is their showdown with the Grim Reaper ( William Sadler ), who looks just as he does in Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal."
(Of course, the allusion to Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal is completely lost on the film's teen audience.)
The hand-me-down story line borrows from "101 Dalmatians," "Toy Story 2" and the animal pound interlude of "Lady and the Tramp."
The hand-me-down story line borrows from "101 Dalmatians," "Toy Story 2" and the animal pound interlude of "Lady and the Tramp."
Director John Lasseter worked with a team of screenwriters, which included Buffy guru Joss Whedon, future Pixar Oscar winners Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, WALL•E) and Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc., Up), Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow (who would go on to collaborate on decidedly lesser future projects like the Garfield movies and Daddy Day Camp), and Disney veteran Joe Ranft (who had contributed story material to both Beauty & the Beast and The Lion King) to craft a story that is both familiar and unique.
It comes as little surprise that Cohen and Sokolow (both of whom co-wrote Toy Story) have penned the film's screenplay, as the film's structure eerily echoes that Pixar hit.
Bill Murray's ("Lost in Translation") sardonic drawl is the perfect voice for Jim Davis' long running comic strip creation, but his wit is not matched by screenwriters Joel Cohen & Alec Sokolow ("Toy Story"), who strain milking laughs from pop cultural references and the repetitive observations of Davis himself.
…disinterest by “Toy Story” scribes Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow, and directed by Peter Hewitt, whose previous contribution to world cinema was “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.”
To say that the film borrows liberally from the Toy Story films for its plot would be a bit like comparing the cumulative differences between amoebae with a view from space; a self-professed master of his domain finds his top-shelf position threatened by an over-eager newcomer, and eventually acquiesces to his companionship after a daring rescue has been played out.
Although when his new rival gets lost -- then kidnapped by a tacky TV pet-trick showman (Stephen Tobolowsky) -- Garfield feels guilty because he let Odie out of the house, and the cat reluctantly mounts a rescue mission that bears more than a passing resemblance to the plot of "Toy Story 2."
Incidentally, Odie's capture and rescue also anchored the plot of Garfield's first animated half-hour special, "Here Comes Garfield."
In this movie, he’s a fully grown Siamese cat that acts as Garfield’s low-rent side kick and talks with a voice more annoying than John Leguizamo’s sloth in “Ice Age.”
“Garfield” is being released with a short cartoon featuring Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel from “Ice Age,” called “Gone Nutty” that is an entertaining diversion an homage to the little critter’s acorns.
If you go to Garfield: The Movie, you'll also get to see ''Gone Nutty,'' a digitally animated 2002 short from the creators of ''Ice Age.''
Small wonder that most viewers will find considerably more laughs in the brief "Gone Nutty" cartoon (starring the scheming Scrat of "Ice Age" fame) that precedes "Garfield" than they'll get from the feature itself.
The few moments of delight associated with this misbegotten film come in the jubilant opening short subject, a mini-sequel to 2002's animated feature "Ice Age." Scrat, the acorn-crazy, saber-toothed squirrel, amasses a huge hoard of nuts for the long prehistoric winter, but finds it impossible to keep them from rolling away.
That computer-animated, Oscar-nominated short, which features the prehistoric rodent Scrat from "Ice Age," is everything the "Garfield" feature is not.
Paul Giamatti, Ned Beatty and Radcliffe’s “Harry Potter” castmate Rupert Grint starred in 2002’s “Thunderpants,” while in 1991, something called “F.A.R.T.
Because while Sonic the Hedgehog is cut from the same bland mold as Garfield (2004), Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007), and The Smurfs (2011), the one thing besides the little blue fur ball that feels most like a relic of the Clinton years is Jim Carrey.
Striking the one clear false note is Chevy Chase (2006's " Zoom ").
Highlights include a dance-off between Garfield and Odie to a Black-Eyed Peas song, a wild ride through airducts and stairs as Garfield tries to find Odie, and some just-to-keep-the-parents-awake references to Jerry Maguire, Apocalypse Now, Elvis, Billy Joel, and even Shakespeare's Henry V.
Alan Cummings ("X2") is fun as Chapman's discarded cat Persnickitty and Nick Cannon ("Drumline") gives cute personality to Garfield's diminutive mouse buddy, Louis.
Computer generated imaging (CGI) has been in fairly widespread use since Steven Spielberg employed it to bring dinosaurs to life in Jurassic Park.
It is superior to 2001's similar "Cats & Dogs" while falling short of the "Stuart Little" flicks.
At the beginning of this film, I thought of Garfield. That orange cartoon cat doesn’t appear in this Pixar film, but his legacy is in the opening scenes.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
Directed by Chris Columbus
influenced by The Borrowers (1997)
Tom Felton ("Anna and the King," "The Borrowers"), Robbie Coltrane ("The World is Not Enough," "Message in a Bottle"), Alan Rickman ("Galaxy Quest," "Die Hard"), Maggie Smith ("Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," "Gosford Park"), and the late Richard Harris ("The Count of Monte Cristo," "Gladiator") also reprise their respective roles, but the latter three don't get as much screen time as I would have liked to have seen (although I realize this isn't their story).
Younger sister Ginny Weasley's (Bonnie Wright) crush on Harry is established and we're introduced to Mr. Weasley (Mark Williams, "The Borrowers").