Initially, it seems like we’re getting a feature-length origin story of how the orange tabby (Chris Pratt) wound up dwelling with proprietor Jon Arbuckle (Nicholas Hoult) and beagle greatest buddy Odie (Harvey Guillen) after a quick introduction, however we flash again to the current day shortly after for a excessive stakes kidnapping plot.
The pets are kidnapped from their kitchen by the 2 canine henchmen of Persian cat Jinx (Hannah Waddingham), which through an elaborate string of occasions, leads their paths in direction of Garfield’s estranged father Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), with whom they need to crew up on a dairy farm heist. Briefly, you would be bodily incapable of condensing the mere set-up of this narrative inside a three-panel strip, with director Mark Dindal — a Disney veteran who hasn’t helmed a film since 2005’s “Rooster Little”; contemplate this his long-awaited parole from director jail — and his screenwriters convoluting the supply materials’s easy charms to the extent it is barely recognizable as a “Garfield” story. The world of Jim Davis’ caricature is a hermetically sealed one; an earthly suburbia, frozen in time and unburdened by any overt cultural ties to the true world. A “Garfield” strip from 40 years in the past might be mistaken for one from 5 years in the past, as there’ll by no means be direct references throughout the panels to the most recent headlines, or popular culture phenomena which might age them. That is an strategy the film would not share, which would not be an issue if the popular culture gags inside weren’t lazy.
There’s one exception to this, as Garfield and Vic’s heist is co-ordinated by Otto, a bull voiced by Ving Rhames, who’s all however reprising his function as hacker Luther Stickell from the “Mission: Inconceivable” franchise – you half anticipate him to begin calling different characters Ethan after he offers them detailed directions through headset. It is the one gag geared toward any dad and mom watching that does not bend over backwards to name out what it is referencing, which is not to say the movie is absolutely restrained. The well-known theme music to that franchise briefly overpowers the rating in a single second, and in one other, Pratt’s feline breaks the fourth wall to assert that solely he and Tom Cruise do their very own stunts, and that is simply to call the moments by which “Mission: Inconceivable” will get referred to as out within the screenplay. Youngsters’ films referencing older works that kids within the viewers will not have seen is hardly new, however every popular culture nod is inserted with none punchline to justify its inclusion. The reference is the extent of the joke, as if it had been a placeholder in an early draft of the screenplay to be labored into one thing sharper simply earlier than manufacturing, which not one of the three credited screenwriters (considered one of whom, David Reynolds, co-wrote “Discovering Nemo” — you’d by no means guess from this) acquired round to doing.