Review: Garfield: The Movie

Garfield: The Movie was released in 2004 starring Breckin Meyer as Jon Arbuckle, Jennifer Love Hewitt as Jon's love interest, Liz and Bill Murray as the voice of Garfield, Jon's orange pet cat. Garfield has been a pet to Jon for a long time and is being lavished with all the love, care and attention being showered upon him by Jon for a long time.

However, things started to change when Liz who is a vet told Jon there was a puppy named Odie is being put up for adoption, and she encouraged him to adopt Odie. Jon then went ahead to adopt Odie, overlooking the fact that Garfield might be jealous of the puppy.

Garfield went all out to make Odie's life miserable as he tried to get Jon's attention. However, his plans backfired when Odie ran away after Garfield locked him out of the house. Odie was then found by an old lady named Mrs. Baker played by Eve Brent. She then put up a notice informing the public a puppy has been found and it attracted the attention of a crook working for a TV station, looking for a new animal act for his show.

Happy Chapman played by Stephen Tobolowsky originally has a cat on his TV show. Unfortunately, the TV show was experiencing a decline in audience rating in which prompted Chapman to try to look for a new act. Also, he is allergic to cats. Thus, when Chapman went to see Mrs. Baker who is temporarily keeping Odie, he claimed himself to be the rightful owner to the puppy.

Meanwhile when Jon and Liz found out Odie had gone missing, it has made Garfield guilty conscious about the incident as he was the one who locked Odie out in the first place causing him to run away. Thus, Garfield with the help of some of his friends living on the streets went to track down Odie, where Chapman had held him captive and planned to take him to New York City to feature in a new TV show. It was an adventure of a lifetime for Garfield who for the first time in his life ventured out far from home to rescue Odie, although he very much resented the fact that Odie is getting more attention and love from Jon.

This movie is really funny to the core and I highly recommend it as a family movie because it showed that it does not pay to abuse animals, especially when they are being adopted as pets or being portrayed in the show business. Not to mention having more than one pet means there should be equal fairness where care, affection and attention are concerned.

Although the character of Garfield was created using CGI technology, the movie producer did a great job in ensuring him to be as life-like as possible. This movie might not have won any awards and/or nominations; however, it is still worth a mention as I found it to be a feel-good movie with plenty of comical scenes and laughs to go around for pure family fun and enjoyment.