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Garfield movie buzz – Why is everyone talking about the new Garfield movie?
Lock up your lasagne – because the world’s favourite fat cat is padding back onto the big screen on 24 May at ODEON. It feels like a long time since we’ve had Garfield in our lives. Now, with the Bill Murray-voiced live action capers of the noughties a distant memory, Garfield 2024 returns the gourmet furball to his animated roots – and it’s about time.
“Though he's been in the world of live-action/CG in his two most recent movies, Garfield always seemed to work better on screen in purely animated form,” writes Empire’s James White of this first-ever feature-length Garfield cartoon. “And the cat's creator, Jim Davis, is serving as an executive producer here.”
Garfield backstory – Where did Garfield originally come from?
It was the late-’70s, and struggling cartoonist Jim Davis was at a make-or-break career crossroads. “I did a bug strip for five years that ran in a local weekly paper and nobody liked it,” he told Complex. “The editor said, ‘The gags are good, the art is good, but bugs? Nobody can relate’. So I took a long hard look at the comics and I saw dogs doing well – Snoopy, Marmaduke, Fred Basset. I thought, ‘Well, if people like dogs, maybe I could do a cat strip?’”
Remembering his childhood on an Indiana farm alongside 25 cats, a lightbulb lit above Davis’s head (or it would have done, if life was a cartoon). Garfield was based on the artist’s “cantankerous” grandfather, but evolved to become more of a snarky slob, outwitting his owner Jon, abusing fellow pet Odie the dog and shovelling down Italian cuisine.
Weirdly, though, we loved Garfield despite his character flaws (or maybe because of them). “We live in a time when we’re made to feel guilty about overeating, oversleeping, not exercising,” Davis told The Guardian. “Garfield not only does all that stuff but he’s cool with that. I think in a way he relieves our guilt. Garfield is everyone’s alter ego.”
What is the plot of the Garfield movie 2024? Story and setup
If you’ve followed Garfield since ’78, you’ll know he doesn’t leave the sofa unless the house is burning down. Now, The Garfield Movie punts this pampered puss into the great outdoors, for a reluctant road trip alongside his scruffy alleycat dad, Vic, and long-suffering sidekick Odie. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, not meatball marinara.
Cast of the Garfield movie – Who stars in this new Garfield animation?
When you think about the most successful animations of recent years, they all have one thing in common. Chris Pratt. First he was Emmet in The Lego Movie, then he was Nintendo’s poster boy in The Super Mario Bros Movie – now the Virginia-born actor tells us his preparation for The Garfield Movie is practically method acting. “I have been deep in research on this one,” posted Pratt. “Mostly eating lessons. But also licking myself clean.”
Harvey Guillén has form as cartoon dogs, having played Perrito in Puss In Boots: The Last Wish. But as he told MovieWeb, he didn’t realise the fundamental problem with voicing Odie until the project began. “I was like, ‘Wait, does Odie not speak?’” recalled the Californian actor, “and they went, ‘We’d like for you to convey all these different emotions as the movie progresses, but you can’t use words. It was such a challenge to give Odie a personality because it’s just sound effects. You’re just using your vocal chords with sound effects and character. And so that was a challenge but so fun to do.”
Back in 1994, while watching Pulp Fiction, you probably wouldn’t have guessed that Bible-spouting hitman Jules Winfield and his brutal kingpin Marsellus Wallace would end up as animated wildlife in the new Garfield movie. But here we are. Based on the Garfield 2024 trailer, Samuel L. Jackson will be loose with the law as Vic, while we don’t yet know if Ving Rhames will be a friend or foe as Otto the bull.
Supporting Garfield movie cast – Who plays Jon in the Garfield movie 2024?
Elsewhere in the Garfield movie cast, Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham voices a swanky Persian cat named Jinx, thought to be the film’s antagonist. Nicholas Hoult (Mad Max: Fury Road) voices Garfield and Odie’s owner Jon. And get this – Snoop Dogg himself will play against type as Snoop Catt.
Is this the first Garfield animated movie?
Hard to believe, but yes. Back in the late-’80s, Jim Davis wrote the script for a feature-length cartoon titled "Garfield’s Judgement Day". The legend goes that the voice cast even started work – before the apocalyptic tone spooked studios and the project was shelved. Four decades later, The Garfield Movie finally brings the billion-dollar cat back to the format he was born for.
Garfield 2024 trivia – What’s a fun fact about the new Garfield movie?
Snoop Dogg doesn’t just lend his dramatic chops to the new Garfield movie – the rap legend also features on the soundtrack, supplying a guest flow on Keith Urban’s original song "Let It Roll" (‘Wobble the wiggle, why slide off the back?/Pay no attention, my head in my hat’). Check out the music video here.
The Garfield Movie release date – When does Garfield 2024 come out and why see it at ODEON?
The Garfield Movie is released 24 May. However, if you want to watch it before its general release there will be preview showings on 18 and 19 May. ODEON is also hosting a special preview showing on 12 May where 100% of proceeds go to Medicinema; an organisation that arranges screenings for children in hospital so that they can experience the magic of cinema, and do amazing work improving the wellbeing of NHS patients.
ODEON’s laughter-enhancing big screen and surround sound leave all other viewing formats in the litter tray. Bill Murray’s live action tenure of the noughties was a great stop-gap, but as Jim Davis himself told Vice, Garfield is at his funniest when he’s brought back to the drawing board. “That's where he really entertains. That’s where he struts his stuff. That's his sweet spot…”