Reviews of the upcoming animated film The Garfield Movie, featuring the voices of Chris Pratt and Samuel L. Jackson, have not been the cat’s meow.
According to a synopsis from the producers, the film details “Garfield’s (Pratt) unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, ragged alley cat Vic (Jackson),” after which “he and his canine friend Odie (Harvey Guillén) ) are forced to abandon their perfectly pampered lives to join Vic in a risky heist.
The animated film, directed by Mark Dindal, also features the voices of Hannah Waddingham, Nicholas Hoult, Cecily Strong, Brett Goldstein, Bowen Yang and Snoop Dogg.
Several professional film critics included in a compendium of 31 reviews published in the media rotten tomatoes Monday featured a less than favorable impression of the film, an adaptation of the popular comic strip that debuted in the late 1970s.
After debuting at the TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday, it is scheduled to hit theaters nationwide on Friday.
Reviews of the upcoming animated film The Garfield Movie, voiced by Chris Pratt, 44, have not been the cat’s meow. Pratt photographed at the film’s premiere Sunday at the TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles.
The film is an adaptation of the popular comic strip that debuted in the late 1970s.
IGN Movies Critic AA Dowd said that while the film “promisingly echoes the simple artwork of its comic-strip inspiration…what it really takes from Jim Davis’ material is a brazen cynicism, evident in the placement of corporate products and pandering pop culture references. .’
Dowd said that Pratt’s “phone performance as a phone-addicted Garfield doesn’t help” and that “the kids may be a little entertained, but that doesn’t make this any less of a hairball.”
The Cricket Movie Sean P. Means said, “I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie as bland and generic as The Garfield Movie, which turns Jim Davis’ misanthropic comic book cat into just another piece of pre-digested intellectual property.”
Means said both Pratt and Jackson failed to add any dynamism to the process.
“The first sign of this movie’s lack of imagination is the casting of Chris Pratt as the lasagna-obsessed orange cat,” Means said. ‘Once upon a time, Pratt brought a naïve charm to the voice work on The Lego Movie.
“But as became clear with The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Pratt has become a name that producers write down to voice the main character until they can think of someone better, and then they forget to think of someone better.”
Means said that while Jackson “is a talented actor with a legendary career,” he felt his portrayal of Garfield was phoned in.
IndieWire Kate Erbland said the animated film couldn’t “escape the glare of corporate synergy,” noting that the film is peppered “with product placement for everything from Olive Garden to Walmart.”
In the Sony Pictures animated film, Pratt provides the voice of Garfield (left), while Samuel L. Jackson voices Vic.
Pratt’s “phone performance as a phone-addicted Garfield doesn’t help,” one critic said of the actor.
Erbland asked: ‘Is this a children’s movie or a commercial? And if it’s the latter, a commercial for what exactly?
“Call it a Monday case, but this kitten needs to go back to the drawing board.”
Rant’s Screen Rachel LaBonte said that the film fell short on an artistic level: “Compared to other recent animated films, The Garfield Movie feels distinctly mediocre and offers nothing original or creatively stimulating.”
LaBonte had a more positive view of the vocal performances, saying that Jackson proved to be “reliable” and Pratt “isn’t as bad as Garfield” as he “knows how to find the humor in certain lines and injects some vulnerability into the occasional ones.” . more intense emotional rhythm.
The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck said that several meta-references written into the film reach neither the “very young target audience” nor “their adult companions.”
“It’s indicative of the laziness and cynicism that permeates this enterprise, which sacrifices the character’s subversive humor in favor of routine animated antics.”
Scheck said that “the rudimentary animation does the film no favors, nor does Pratt’s lead voice,” whose work he described as colorless.
“The strange result is a Garfield with no attitude,” Scheck said.
