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

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy - in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks - is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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