 
Back
Shelf Beauties
by Willie Waffle
|
Garfield:
A Tail of Two Kitties
The
fat cat is back, and there is no rejoicing.
The
title is supposed to be an indicator of how cute and cheeky the movie
is
intended to be, but it just serves as a warning signal to anyone with
good
taste. If you are over the age of 4, you will want to go
running for the
hills after 30 minutes. Anyone under the age of 4 started
running up and
down the aisles at the 20-minute mark (trust me, I sat through a
showing of the
film in a theater full of youngsters who grew more and more restless
and
ill-behaved as the movie went further and further into the
abyss). There
is no shame in direct-to-DVD, which is where Garfield: A
Tail of Two Kitties belongs.
In this sequel to the average, but entertaining Garfield:The Movie,
Jon (Breckin Meyer) has
decided it is time to propose to his sweetheart (a smart move to lock
her up
before she realizes she can do better), Liz (Jennifer Love Hewitt). However, she has been
chosen to replace Jane
Goodall as a speaker at the British Royal Animal Conservatory
conference (I
heard you roll your eyes! Not that it was wrong...), and must jet off
to Merry
Olde England
before Jon can pop the question. He decides it would be a
great idea to
follow her across the pond and propose to her there, so, of course,
Garfield
(voice by Bill Murray) and Odie stow away for the trip. If
only that was
the end of the plot, but there's more, and you aren't going to like the
sound
of this.
While in England, another cat who looks exactly like our coddled
calico, Prince
(voice by Tim Curry), inherits a royal fortune and castle, but the
deceased has
a good-for-nothing relative, Lord Dargis (Billy "When you can't afford
John Cleese, give me a call" Connolly), who stands to inherit it all if
something happens to Prince, so he gets rid of the cat.
However, a twist
of fate leads to Garfield being mistaken for Prince, and brought back
to the
castle, where he must avoid getting whacked, and substitute for the
royal
feline to protect all of the other animals on the property.
Can Garfield
pull it off? Will Prince ever return to the castle?
Will Jon and
Odie find their beloved pal?
This movie is so bad, I think you could shoot Garfield and even PETA would not object. Garfield: A
Tail of Two Kitties
qualifies as the most pointless sequel of the year, and
possibly the dumbest as well. Whoever suggested this
ridiculous story idea
should be driven out of town by a gang of studio executives carrying
pitchforks
and flaming torches. However, 20th Century Fox must have felt it was a
sure
thing to sell tickets for this sequel to parents who are dying to get
their kid
out of the house, so they let director Tim Hill go off to do what he
could to
get this piece of trash on celluloid. Yet, the material isn't there to
make
this a memorable, must-see follow up for even the most driven and
mentally
unbalanced Garfield
fanatics.
The
writers, Joel Cohen and
Alec Sokolow, have come up with a premise that sounds like a sweeps
month TV
sit-com stunt with the gang heading off to England,
but doesn't do much to
take advantage of the locale. Then,
what
starts off as a story about Garfield's jealousy of Liz and his fear
about how a
marriage may effect his cushy lifestyle quickly devolves into the one
millionth
twist on The Prince and the Pauper, a plot line so overdone it makes
the hot
dogs at 7-11 seems fresh by comparison. It’s like
they had an idea for two
different movies and someone smushed them together.
Finally, Cohen and Sokolow give up trying to
write decent dialogue that derives its humor from the well loved
characters and
their personalities, and let Garfield: A
Tail of Two Kitties
become a movie
full of potty humor, guys getting kicked and bitten below the belt, and
Odie
peeing on the leg of a palace guard, while also tossing in the most
predictable
plot and jokes you can ever imagine.
Murray
gives it everything he's got as Garfield
engages in a series of gags and antics so worn out and ridiculous, he
has to
feel just a slight pang of guilt in those deep dark moments when he is
laying
in bed trying to fall asleep. You
know Murray must have gotten some absurd
amount of cash like $10 or $15 million for about 3 days of work to be
convinced
to participate in such a bad movie with no surprises and jokes that go
beyond
insulting our intelligence (and I bet he made them schedule his
recording
sessions for Monday - Wednesday so he could play golf and LAUGH ALL THE
WAY TO
THE BANK on Thursday and Friday).
The
movie is groaningly bad, but the master wrings out a few laughs here
and there,
as if he accidentally stumbled across something he could make funny. Although, Murray
is to blame for the lowest point in my
career as a movie critic as he sings a take off of the classic Movin’ On Up
from the TV show, The
Jeffersons. Oh,
the
horror.
Just
when you think it’s safe to move on with your life, we even
get an 80’s TV
show-like ending credits sequence with still photos of stuff we saw in
the
movie, as if this tragedy is determined to haunt us even as we run out
of the
theater to escape the pain of it all.
Yet, I am left to wonder if another cheaply made
sequel is in the works
with Jim Belushi taking over the voice of Garfield. Now THAT’S a
made-for-DVD idea.
0
Waffles (Out Of 4)
Copyright 2006 - WaffleMovies.com
|
