The Garfield Movie (2024)

Seemingly abandoned by his dad in an alleyway in the rain, poor little "Garfield" espies the unsuspecting and lonely looking "Jon" having a pizza across the road. In a shot he's looking all sad and bedraggled at the windows, next he's demolished the man's dinner and finally coaxed him from his comfortable flat to a new house that they share with the dog "Odie". His life is just one idyllic round of snoozing, eating and watching "Catflix" until he and "Odie" are kidnapped. Why? Well it's only when they are rescued by a caped hero - who turns out to be his dad "Vic", and we then are introduced to the criminal mastermind that is "Jinx" who has an axe to grind, that we start to get to the bottom things. She spent ages in the pound and is looking for her pint of milk! Now "Garfield", "Odie" and "Vic" have to come up with plan to rob a well defended dairy to settle scores. Even if they succeed, can they trust the duplicitous "Jinx" and her two sinister hench-creatures? It's an amiable enough adventure movie, this, with plenty of daft escapades for the cats, a menacing security officer and even an old lovelorn bull ("Otto") who's seen better days. I found the story reminded me a bit of the "Wallace and Gromit" kind of mishap-ridden narrative and though it's probably twenty minutes too long to sustain a film that doesn't seem to ever want to end, it's got the usual messages to team-playing, family and loyalty and has some quite witty one-liners now and again.