Movie Review

Latest animated film The Garfield Movie is not exactly the cat's meow

Jon (Nicholas Hoult) and Garfield (Chris Pratt) in The Garfield Movie.

Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures

The decline in newspaper readership in the 21st century has also resulted in comic strips becoming much less popular. Thanks to the fandom they accrued, however, some comic strip characters have endured, including everyone’s favorite lazy cat, Garfield. A testament to that lasting popularity is the mere existence of The Garfield Movie, the second attempt to bring him to the big screen following two previous horrendous animated/live action hybrid films, 2004’s Garfield: The Movie and 2006’s Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties.

After watching this new computer-generated animated film, though, it might have been better to leave the characters to the funny pages. The film starts off showing Garfield (voiced by Chris Pratt) as we all know and love him: Hating Mondays, driving his owner Jon (Nicholas Hoult) and fellow pet Odie (Harvey Guillén) crazy, and eating lots of food, especially lasagna (however, in a shocking development, the first food he consumes on screen is a large pepperoni pizza).

The appearance of Garfield’s long-lost father, Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), sends Garfield and Odie on a big adventure. It seems that Vic, in a milk heist gone wrong, sent a cat named Jinx (Hannah Waddingham) to jail, aka the pound. Now out, Jinx is looking for repayment of all the milk she missed out on during her five-year sentence. Garfield and Odie must help Vic break into a now well-protected milk factory, or Jinx and her dog goons will make them pay the price.

Directed by Mark Tindal and written by Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgrove, and David Reynolds, the film contains very little in the way of charm or cleverness, and it all starts with the main cat himself. The previous two Garfield movies may have been bad, but they at least had the right idea in casting Bill Murray as the voice of Garfield, as he brought a sarcasm that fits the character’s personality. Pratt’s voice lacks that certain element that keeps Garfield entertaining.

The mediocre nature continues into the story, which feels forced from the start. The introduction of Garfield’s heretofore unknown father is confusing (what about his mother?), and the “adventure” that makes up the bulk of the film is never interesting in the slightest. The filmmakers compound their storytelling mistakes by adding in the most obvious references ever, such as Garfield, Odie, and Vic sneaking into the milk factory while the Mission: Impossible theme song plays.

It’s here that some will say that “this movie is for kids, not adults,” and that’s true. But there are plenty of animated films that make the effort to not just play to the lowest common denominator, as this film does repeatedly. And because Garfield is a character who has existed since the 1970s, throwing a few bones to an older crowd that actually remembers seeing his hijinks in newspapers might have been warranted.

Pratt isn’t the only actor who doesn’t wow with his voice performance. Jackson has one of the most distinctive voices in the industry, but it’s subdued within a character who doesn’t bring much to the table. Waddingham, as she did in The Fall Guy, gets to dial it up as the villain, and at least she and Ving Rhames as henchman Otto appear to be having some fun. And if anyone can tell me why it makes sense to cast a Brit like Hoult to affect a high-and-whiny American accent as Jon, I would appreciate the insight.

Time will tell as to whether The Garfield Movie will resonate with a generation that has no real history with the character. But since the filmmakers appear to have put little effort into making the film broadly appealing, there’s not much hope that it will be a lasting love.

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The Garfield Movie is now playing in theaters.

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Movie Review

New film I Want Your Sex somehow makes kinky activity boring

Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde in I Want Your Sex.

Writer/director Gregg Araki has been making provocative movies for nearly 40 years, releasing his debut - Three Bewildered People in the Night - in 1987. Most of them have had plotlines that revolved around sex in one way or another, and for his latest - his first film in 12 years - he’s putting it right there in the title, I Want Your Sex.

Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) is an aimless twenty-something who can’t even afford the rent for his apartment with best friend, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders). Thankfully, he finds a job at the gallery of artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), who is open with her sexuality both in her artwork and in her day-to-day life. That soon includes Elliot, whom she convinces to enter into a dominant-submissive relationship with her, with sessions taking place both at work and her home.

Elliot, who’s in a going-nowhere coupling with Minerva (Charli XCX), is more than willing to participate, both because it lets him feel something he doesn’t get normally and because Erika offers a perspective on sex that’s much different from people of his generation. But as he gets in deeper with her, he starts to lose a sense of himself, going down a path in which he finds himself talking to police detectives Zem (Johnny Knoxville) and Zola (Margaret Cho).

Araki does his level best to make I Want Your Sex into a broad comedy, and early on it seems as if he might succeed. The deadpan way that sexual objects appear in the film (a penis-shaped rug in Elliot and Apple’s apartment, a vagina artwork with chewed gum as the medium) make for amusing sight gags. He also makes Elliot the bewildered other in multiple twosomes, with Minerva being the funniest, as she’s way more interested in studying than his ham-fisted attempts at sex.

It’s clear that Araki wants the film to be a commentary on the generational differences about sex, but he fumbles his own idea. It starts with an on-the-nose conversation between Erika and Elliot, and continues with the various dalliances, which seem to be more about making Elliot look and feel ridiculous than giving true insight. Their encounters certainly open his mind about what sex can be, but their one-note nature makes them repetitive and frankly boring, odd considering the acts in which the two engage.

The uninspired storytelling makes the 90-minute film drag way more than it should. Araki includes a few other characters to try to vary the tone of the film, including gallery workers Zap (Mason Gooding) and Vikktor (Daveed Diggs), but their early promise yields little results. The framing device of Elliot’s interview with the detectives never works, especially because Araki completely neuters the personalities of Cho and Knoxville for seemingly no good reason.

The cast as a whole goes to waste. Hoffman is showing the promise of his late father (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and even though he’s appealing here, the material pulls him down. Wilde just made her own provocative movie about sex (The Invite), and this one pales in comparison despite her heightened performance. Wonders, Charli XCX, and Gooding are all young stars who deserve to be showcased much better than they are in this film.

A film called I Want Your Sex is announcing itself as daring and alluring, but this film contains almost none of those qualities. Instead, it’s a slog that only occasionally has something interesting to show or say, mostly relying on the power of its actors to hold viewers’ attention - and failing at even that.

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I Want Your Sex is now playing in select theaters.