Garfield Gets Real (2007)

Garfield Gets Real (2007)

Directed by: Mark A.Z. Dippé, Kyung Ho Lee

Starring: Frank Welker, Gregg Berger, Audrey Wasilewski

You see, when most people see that there’s a CGI Garfield movie about to come on TV, they have the good sense to change the channel or turn off the TV, or really do anything OTHER than watch it. This is what makes me different. I’m… stupid, I guess.

Garfield Gets Real has a very unique backstory to it. Sure, we all know Garfield and Odie and Jon and the rest of the characters, but in this movie they’re all actors in an alternate dimension where newspaper comics are acted out, then magically printed in newspapers. Garfield feels in a rut doing the same thing every day (which is understandable, since there hasn’t been a new idea in a Garfield strip in 20 years), so he decides to escape from the newspaper dimension to the real world, along with Odie. Since they aren’t there to make the comic anymore and they can’t get back into the newspaper, the comics bigwigs plan on finishing Garfield and replacing it, so Garfield and Odie have to keep them from cancelling their strip long enough for the cast of comics characters inside the newspaper dimension to figure out a way to get them back.

Yeah, this is definitely a strange way of looking at Garfield. They’re supposed to be actors, but they all act exactly like they do while not “acting”… and… and then there’s all the other off-brand comic characters inside the newspaper dimension with the cast of Garfield, oh, except Dagwood (of Blondie fame (not the band)), who shows up in a non-speaking cameo for absolutely no reason at all. I’m really not interested in the story behind the movie at all, as it’s fairly predictable and hackneyed. I just keep trying to think if anybody has ever portrayed a newspaper as a magical factory before… and why they did that this time. Hell, it’s the only thing that kept this movie from being a complete waste of time… and turned it into a mind puzzle because WHY DID THEY DO THAT GAHHH!

If you absolutely have to watch a Garfield movie (the only reason I can think of for this being some sort of Saw situation), I’d say give Garfield Gets Real a shot. You’ll constantly be wondering what ordinary thing they’re going to give magical properties to next!