Garfield: The Movie IS COMING!!!!!!!!!!! (1 Viewer)

[Dan Hitchman]

Bill Murray and the writing team of Toy Story? Hmmm... perhaps. Maybe PIXAR will animate Garfield and Odie. They are very good at mixing hand drawn character styles with 3-D computer work (just look at Finding Nemo!). PIXAR also helped WETA with Gollum.

Liz was the love interest, as I recall, for a few of the early strips. Jon & Garfield screw that relationship up royally. Unless Hollywood FUX it up like they usually do.

Maybe, just maybe we have something here.

Dan

 

[Timothy Alexander]

Think of this connection.

Lorenzo Music who supplied Garfield's voice in the animated series also did the voice of Peter Venkman in The Real Ghostbusters animated series. Of course, Bill Murray portrayed Peter in the Ghostbusters movies.

 

[MarkHastings]

Good call Timothy!
If Garfield's voice is good enough to play Bill Murray's character (in the GB cartoon), than Bill Murray is good enough to play Garfield voice

 

[ThomasC]

The teaser trailer is up: http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/garfield/
Garfield looks okay, I guess, but Odie is just WRONG. They should've animated him. Hopefully it won't matter as much when I see the movie, but the big ears and the massive slobbering tongue was a big part of his character.

 

[Tony Whalen]

Totally agree Thomas. Although I think Garfield looks pretty good! Odie is just a normal lookin' dog though? That ain't right...

 

[TheBat]

they are trying to make what garfield and odie would be like in the real world.. like the movie cats and dogs.

JACOB

 

[ThomasC]

Well, Garfield is still animated.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Why isn't Odie animated?

 

[JustinCleveland]

Because Odie is supposed to be a regular dog... but he also doesn't look like the Odie we all know and love.

 

[Tony Whalen]

they are trying to make what garfield and odie would be like in the real world..

If that was the case, why is Garfield not a normal orange tabby, but a close approximation of his comic-strip appearance?
I just think that if ONE of the characters is CG-animated, they should BOTH be. Jon being human is fine... but Odie being a normal dog seems strange ... to me at least.

 

[Malcolm R]

That looks awful! This life-long Garfield fan is hugely disappointed. :frowning:

 

[Robert Anthony]

this movie is about 15 years late anyway--but wow. I just don't think there's really anything about this flick that looks remotely well thought out. The script, from what reviews I've read, sounds pretty by the numbers and blah--the casting, save for Murray, seems way off. Breckin Meyer as a 30 year old bachelor loser? Jennifer Love Hewitt as a cold, acidic Veterinarian? And the choice making Odie into a half-weiner dog, and not an animated character like Garfield.

I just don't think anything about this, as it stands, is going to work. You can hope for a radical re-shooting and whatnot, and to have this thing pushed way back, but I doubt it would happen.

Lower your expectations

 

[JustinCleveland]

Well, I'm thinking it's going to make Scooby Doo look like high art...

The Cartoon got it RIGHT. The strips are BASIC. He's a lazy cat, he doesn't go bouncing around the room. It's simple, but they look like they've clustered it up too much...

 

[Robert Anthony]

good point. The trailer even makes a point to accent that he's a fat, lazy cat--and 3/4ths of the Garfield shots are him jumping around, shaking his tail...
Are we slowly veering towards Cat in the Hat territory? Already? Just off one trailer?
...god bless the internet

 

[Adam_ME]

I never thought this movie was gonna turn out any good, but that teaser managed to fall below even my already non-existent expectations. First of all, enough with the damn Risky Business spoofs! That flick's 20 years old(hard to believe), so come up with something else to parody. Same goes for the Elvis impersonation.

Secondly, what the hell were they thinking making Odie a real dog?! Were they afraid we wouldn't accept him as a CGI character? Cuz if we've already got Garfield being animated, why not Odie? It makes you wonder how badly they'll screw up Nermal.

And lastly(and sue me if this is nitpicking), Jon's house looks way too big and fancy. It makes you wonder if the people behind this movie ever even read the comic or watched the cartoon.

 

[Robert Anthony]

here's the rest of the cast:

Debra Messing: Arlene (Garfield's gap tooth girlfriend)

Brad Garrett: Luca, the Neighborhood Doberman

Alan Cumming: Persnikitty (another cat who Garfield comes across)

Nick Cannon: Louis, the mouse

Jimmy Kimmel: Spanky (A pit bull with a bronx accent)

David Eigenberg: Nermal

Mo'Nique: A rat.

The tagline is "The Movie is all about Me--ow."

....????? what in the...

Fatboy

 

[Scott Burke]

Ouch you guys are really hard on this movie, and it is not even out. While I think the movie went in the wrong direction, it is possible to be a cute movie anyway.

 

[TheBat]

there is alot of hostile reaction to this movie.. even before the teaser was released. I like the teaser and I think the movie will be just fine. I read on the official garfield site that jim davis worked with the writers to get the right attitude of garfield. I think the contrast with meyer and hewitt is just fine.. there has been alot of bad reaction to the idea of the garfield movie all over the place.. which is a real shame. I think people should wait and give it a chance. it will probably be like cats and dogs.. which is not a great movie..but kinda cute. hopefully this will be better.

Robert?

where did you read the reviews on the script? do you have a link?

JACOB

 

[Rich Malloy]

Garfield fanboys? Now I've seen everything!

 

[Robert Anthony]

Nah, don't have a link at the moment, man, I'm sorry. I'll dig around. You tried Googling?

I want to give the movie a shot, but Jim Davis' involvement isn't even all that reassuring: The man hasn't actually written a Garfield strip in like, 5 years now. He just rubber stamps what hits our Newspapers. And the tone of the comic is a lot different from when he DID draw it, when it DID become popular. Back when he was starting--it was a lot more sarcastic, acerbic--basically, it was kind of mean. Which is fine, because to a lot of people, cats are just offhandedly cruel. It's part of their "Charm" And people really responded to it. Then Garfield got huge, was defanged, let loose upon the marketers and now not even 5 or 6 year olds find the cat consistently humorous.

In my daily paper, Garfield sits right next to Get Fuzzy, and I think it makes for a very interesting comparison--because the elements are almost EXACTLY the same:

Garfield: Cheap, loser late 20's early 30's bachelor. Mean spirited, comically cruel cat. Really dumb dog.

Get Fuzzy: Cheap, loser late 20's early 30's bachelor. Mean spirited, comically cruel cat. Really dumb dog.

And you can look at them, side by side, and it's like you see what Garfield COULD have become if Davis had exercised a little more care and control over the marketing of his creation. Get Fuzzy is what "Garfield" probably should have grown into.

But even as cute kids entertainment--I dunno. Of course, there's the typical armchair director computer geek nitpicks: garfield's mouth moves when he "talks," Odie looks like a half-breed weiner dog, Jon is young, Liz is soft, Jon's house isn't a low-rent pre-fabricated box house, but a really nice looking 2 story brownstone, Garfield bounces around like a fat orange striped superball..

But there is nothing about the movie that looks particularly well thought out--that even reflects in the first release date announced back in this spring: December 19th. For one, that's a RIDICULOUSLY short amount of time to write, shoot, and post produce a movie in which the main character is completely CGI. Secondly, it puts Garfield up against RETURN OF THE KING. You're putting a lightweight "kids" movie starring a 25 year old de-fanged comic strip cat up against the final chapter of a HUGE cinematic epic. I'm sure people are thinking that's counterprogramming, because Lord of the Rings isn't exactly family friendly--but I don't know if that would have washed out.

that's not very well thought out. And I think that type of decision making is just showing itself to be all over every part of this movie right now. the only real decent decision was having Bill Murray voice the cat, it looks like.

I'll be checking the movie out, or at least following it, and I do hope I'm wrong: Aside from pixar, most family movies that come out are total crap, and it'd be nice to have something else to look at--but these looks provide very little confidence--which is exactly what a trailer is supposed to DO. I know a lot of people say "It's only a trailer" but if the trailer can't do it's job--to get people to anticipate the film, then I think it deserves to have some worry thrown at it.