The Garfield Movie: A Monument
I don’t watch a lot of movies that touch my soul the way The Garfield movie did. It has it all- moments that will make you laugh maniacally, moments to make you angry, and a few real tearjerkers. First and foremost, what everybody is talking about. I was completely floored by the amount of full-frontal nudity this film had. Garfield and Odie are naked pretty much the whole time and while shocking at first, by minute fifteen the story has already hooked you in. The sensuality of the Garfield movie absolutely takes a backseat to the storytelling while also remaining powerful and ever-present, allowing for a very different energy than a lot of films.
In the film, Garfield (voiced by Chris Pratt) is a secret agent, sent to a sleepy midwestern town to take out the ringleader of a local heroin smuggling ring. When a man finds Garfield walking on the street he mistakes him for a street cat and takes him in, forcing Garfield to go undercover. Through kindness, care, and lots of lasagna Garfield slowly adjusts to the housecat life, maintaining to his superiors that this is just a hitch and he will find the target soon. And what about the kind man that took him in? Jon Arbuckle is a cartoonist by day, and the ringleader of a local heroin smuggling operation by night. Garfield must make the ultimate decision- will he betray his best friend, or his mission?
The Garfield movie tells a lot of the story through flashbacks. There are many flashbacks to Garfield’s career as a secret agent. Harvey Keitel voices the head of the agency Nermal, a role that he’s been quoted as saying is both “the most important of my career,” and “the only thing I wanted to come out of retirement for.
A large portion of the film is dominated by Garfield’s insatiable lust for all of the Devil’s vices- violence, drugs, sex, gluttony. His appetite for womanizing and booze is as endless as his appetite for lasagna- a side effect of his formative years being spent with so little security.
The Garfield movie features a near perfect score, curated by none other than Jim Davis himself. The movie’s sex scenes are overlaid with either saxophone or electric guitar, giving sort of a bad boy vibe to Garfield’s sexual escapades.
The writing is full of cutting observations on society- it’s criticisms of the free market pale in comparison to it’s political satire, while neither undercuts the storytelling.
To me, the eroticism is the core of the Garfield movie. Although the nudity may be jarring at first, it’s also incredibly important to understanding Garfield’s character- the stripped down version of Garfield evokes images of Christian Bale in The Machinist, allowing the audience to truly understand the deterioration of Garfield’s mental state. Chris Pratt has been quoted as saying that this was the toughest physical preparation he’s ever done for any of his film roles.
The film also features a litany of musical numbers to pad out the four hour runtime. The film features a doo-wop style musical number about Garfield’s habits called “D.A.R.E Hater, Marinara Lover” a nod to both his eating habits and his drug problem. Jon Arbuckle (written and voiced by Lin Manuel Miranda) has several different musical numbers about being an outcast cartoonist, something that I thought was a condition of the job.
The Garfield movie has moments that will make you laugh, make you cry, but most of all it will make you feel. The Garfield Movie is a love letter to America’s most iconic and important export: Garfield, and it couldn’t have been more flawlessly executed
