Every now and then, the CGI effects in Garfield: The Movie are less than perfect--which makes you realize how astonishingly seamless the rest of the effects are. When Garfield's owner, Jon (Breckin Meyer, Clueless), agrees to take in a homeless dog so as to flirt with a sexy veterinarian (Jennifer Love Hewitt, I Know What You Did Last Summer), Garfield does his best to oust the dog from the house. But when a greedy television performer (Stephen Tobolowsky, Bossa Nova) kidnaps the mutt for his own nefarious purposes, Garfield sets out on a rescue mission. Garfield is a terrible movie, yet there's something weirdly compelling in its awfulness. Bill Murray (Rushmore, Ghostbusters), who voices the fat cat, has mastered a comic style that wallows fondly in ridiculousness. Perhaps, seduced by the siren call of Murray's voice, the audience can only marvel at the sublime junk of our culture. --Bret Fetzer --This text refers to the Theatrical Release edition.

REVIEW

I never expected to watch the Garfield movie.

It earned terrible reviews from the major media reviewers and amateur reviewers alike. I was predisposed to avoid it. I didn't rent it, but was talked into it.

What we've got is a famous comic strip cat hamming it up on film. The premise in the film is that Garfield, an overweight and lazy, and occasionally witty cat, lives with Jon Arbuckle, a human. Jon's got a crush on Garfield's vet (played by Jennifer Love Hewitt), whom he's had eyes on since high school. The vet talks Jon into talking on a dog (Odie).

Garfield objects to Odie's innocent presence in their home, and puts him out for the night. Odie runs off, is captured by an evil TV animal entertainer. Garfield realizes he's in the wrong, and tries to chase down him down before Odie is brought to New York City.

Jon, in turn, feels awful, because as he sees it, he's lost both his dog and his cat. Worse than that, he's convinced his vet girlfriend looks down on him as a result.

The plot isn't so bad, especially when this is considered a children's movie. It is a little less complicated than other recent animated kids movies, like "Jonah the Veggie Tales Movie" or any of the message-heavy Disney song and dance cartoons. And it is less edgy than the Spiderman, X-Men or Hulk movies. How could it go wrong?

Poor scripting. Poor acting. Poor casting. Poor editing.

Poor scripting
Good movies have good scripts. The classic Peanuts cartoons are classics not just because of the wholesale goodness of Charlie Brown, but because smart writers thought the project through. They did not, as Garfield's team does, rely on a cat dancing for laughs with a dog, or cheap one-liners. Even Michael Jordan's "Space Jam" went beyond this.

Poor acting
Isn't Bill Murray funny? Can't Jennifer Love Hewitt actually act? Maybe Murray was just given bad lines, but he hardly seemed to care. Hewitt is cute, but that was it. She too wasn't there. Breckin Meyer was only OK. It seemed like an unrehearsed reading of a play.

Poor casting
Murray as Garfield is predictable. Like Adam Sandler, Murray seems to only pick roles he has played before.

Poor editing
We never saw the parts when Garfield made friends with a big nasty dog he previously tormented. No explanation was provided for how Jon cleaned up his trashed apartment in what seems to be a few minutes. We jump from scene to scene without the transitions needed for good storytelling. I'm guessing this ended up as budget cuts on the cutting room floor.

Your kids might like the movie, and you can feel family-safe with it. However, go into the Disney archives (before they went hyper-commercial), into the Warner Brothers cartoon vault, and find better quality flicks there.

Anthony Trendl