Hollywood tries again and creates a nightmare for anyone over six years old

At the end of Zombieland: Double tap, Bill Murray starred in a sketch in which the zombie apocalypse catches the actor Ghostbusters in the midst of promoting a fictitious third part of Garfield. A journalist asks him “why the hell Garfield 3?”, to which Murray responds “between you and me? “Drugs are expensive.”

Murray himself claims that the only reason he voiced the character in 2004 and 2006 turned out to be a mistake: thought one of the Coen brothers wrote the script, when in fact it was Joel Cohen, best known for commercial comedies like I continue like God either kangaroo dad 2. The film versions of the comic strip created in the late 1970s by Jim Davis They only have a place in the collective imagination as a joke. None are good, none are exciting, none are really fun.

But they all blow up the box office. It doesn’t matter how many times critics criticize the adaptations of Garfield. His first two films were a feast for the press (“it has no spirit or energy”, “nothing to recommend except the emptiness it transmits”, “cat-astrophic”) but a fundraising success. Why should it matter that the result is disastrous, the business here is different.

We are looking at a familiar product, cooked in meeting rooms and through focus groups, plans full of product placements and a script designed not to offend anyone, awaken any new emotion or explore horizons. Besides, It has an icon recognizable throughout the world, an orange cat capable of being squeezed again and again with very wide margins until a miracle occurs and someone knows how to find its filmic soul (as happened with Mario in 2023) or returns to the box of failures (with Scooby Doo, The Flintstones, The Fantastic four…).

It is a pity that Garfield: the movie It didn’t work, because it could have. Behind is Mark Dindal, responsible for a hilarious fantasy called The emperor and his follies. Where there were carefully maintained backgrounds, editing that made people laugh or memorable characters, here there are cuts made by an algorithm, laziness in the details and formula everywhere. It is immobility made into cinema, the worst of a forced intersection between inertia and art. If The House of Carcasses were a movie, this would be it.

The only reason to be able to enjoy this loud, loud, boring version of a tired character is be three or four years old. And three- and four-year-old children don’t read reviews in CINEMANÍA. So if you have come here to confirm what you already intuit and reinforce your prejudices, to seek solace in the words of another indignant adult man, I hug you with shame and ask you not to talk about this to anyone.

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