Garfield's A Tale of Two Kitties
Breckin Meyer, Bill Murray
I should have sued Bill Waterson long ago for stealing my childhood and splashing it across the comic section under the title of Calvin and Hobbs. It is one of the reasons that I fall all over myself trying to apologize when I bump into former teachers of mine. I had a great bunch of instructors who should have gotten combat pay for having dealt with me. One of the sainted was my 2nd grade teacher named Mrs. Coffee, who used to pass out beans for good behavior. You would put the bean in a baby food jar and when the jar got full you would get a prize. At least that is what I heard. I only got two beans which I promptly jammed in my ears so I would not have to listen to her squawking up front. (I wish I was making this up.) It was a win-win situation for everyone involved, except my mother. I got the wonderful reward of missing the rest of the day of school as my mother made the mad dash to the doctor’s office to get him to remove said vegetable from my ear canal. Old Doc Larson got a great story to go home that evening and tell his wife. Mrs. Coffee got half a day without me. In elementary school, I always tried to get a desk near the window, so I could look out it and go on one of my “rocket rides,” the wonderful term my teachers would use over and over again at every parent-teacher conference for my daydreaming. While the other children where learning addition, I was running through the jungles of Africa with Jane by my side, battling killer robots with my trusty ray gun and kung fu moves, robbing banks with Jesse James and the Younger brothers, and playing center field for the New York Yankees. So it is a day that stands out for me because Mrs. Coffee was making her way back to my desk to try to snap me out of a raid on a Nazi held European village with Sgt. Rock and the boys from Easy Company. As she got near the window, she spied two dogs in the playground. She happily proclaimed, “Oh look children, there are two puppies playing together outside.” I don’t even think she had gotten the words out of her mouth when she realized that the dogs were not playing. They were not fighting. They were doing something else. “Don’t look, children, don’t look,” she cried, but it was too late. I remember proclaiming, “This is the greatest day of school ever,” as she tried to refocus our attention. It is not something you see every day watching our principal, Mr. Boning (Again, I wish I had the imagination to make up that name), try to chase off these two dogs who were not going anywhere. Everyone giggled, had a grand old time, and it felt like hours passed as we watched the scene unfold. The next day came and the dogs were back. Again, there was laughter, but for some reason it just wasn’t as interesting as the day before. They were back a third time, then a fourth time, and by the end of the week no one seemed to notice or cared about the two amorous canines that had been such a delight just a few days earlier.
It is a lesson that Hollywood should pay attention to. You can get almost everyone to purchase a ticket to something once. A studio can throw in a sequel or two and people will come back for more, with less each time until the franchise or genre is dead. You have to give the people something new or you are going to lose them every time. The taking of a cartoon character, reproducing it with CGI, and having it interact with the real world was new and interesting enough to get people to swarm to the theaters to watch Scooby-Doo and Garfield on the big screen. It is the only thing that can explain how the awful 2004 CGI spectacle of the lazy, orange tabby could rake in $75 million at the box office.
When a person thinks of a cartoonist, one pictures a sleep deprived man hunched over a drawing board, trying to come up with that last bit of brilliance that will brighten some poor worker drone’s life a little bit. Past a certain point of success, cartoonists become a brand name and others do their work for them - case in point Jim Davis who has not drawn or written the comic strip Garfield in years. The cartoon cat, created in June 1978, which is the most popular strip ever, appearing in over 2,570 newspapers and journals, employs a host of other cartoonists, writers, and inkers to produce the strip. The extent of Davis’s involvement in the strip is to approve the final product and sign his name in the corner. Other than that, he is concerned about the real cash cows of merchandising and business opportunities. It is why the universe of the lazy, overweight, orange cat named after Davis’s grandfather (James Garfield Davis) has not changed in decades. You can be marooned with Wilson the volleyball on a desert island for the last 20 years, pick up Garfield, and not miss a beat. There is no social or political humor that might offend someone. Even innocent things like Garfield’s owner, Jon Arbuckle, smoking a pipe and subscribing to Bachelor Magazine have been removed long ago in order to maintain its universal appeal. A reader can count on Garfield making the same jokes about overeating, his love of lasagna, laziness, hatred of Mondays, and playing tricks on poor dumb Odie. What some see as bland, others see as consistent, a ritual of sameness in a sea of change.
Like Beanie Babies, Cabbage Patch Dolls, and Harry Potter books, the secret of successful peddling a product to a child is really gearing it towards the parents. Mom and dad love to hand a piece of their childhood to their son or daughter, and people who grew up reading the strip, bought the 46 books, and placed the suction-cupped "Stuck on You" Garfield on their car window and thousands of other pieces of cheap, plastic pop culture crap, want a common bond that they can share with their child. So until they can force a teary-eyed third grader onto the baseball field, Garfield was something safe they could drag their children to, and the first movie was safe, safe and boring. It made its money, picked people’s pockets, and quietly exited the theaters.
Well, Jim Davis and crew are back for a second bite of the apple. Everyone is back. Breckin Meyer is able to fend off working behind the counter of the local KFC for another few months and Bill Murray can stock his tissue dispenser with $100 bills so he can wipe his backside with Benjamin Franklins for another decade or two, which is the only way to explain why they returned. When a franchise or television has jumped the shark, they always send the cast to England for some wacky adventures (The Munsters, The Beverly Hillbillies, Growing Pains, Friends, and the next sequels to the Legally Blonde and Dukes of Hazzard franchises are supposed to be filmed in England). This Garfield yarn is a rip off of Mark Twain’s Prince and Pauper. Jon Arbuckle heads to Europe and Garfield comes along for the ride. Some of the best gags from the strip are used as the fat feline worms his way into going on the trip. Once there, Garfield switches places with his double, a rich cat with his own castle and estate. Garfield is suddenly living the life he has always dreamed of, except the nefarious Lord Dargis (Billy Connolly) has his eyes on the estate. While the CGI is better than in the last movie it still looks like garbage and most of the humor that pops up is either recycled from the strip or the countless Ma and Pa Kettle flicks. While it is not as boring as the first go around, the film is not up to the level of watching paint drying yet.
Verdict: A Boring Sequel to a Boring Movie