Movie Review: Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties

By Cynthia Fuchs

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What Parents Should Know
Parents should know the film includes crude humor. The villain makes rude comments about female bodies, and behaves in a predatory fashion. He also tries to drown the (animated) cat, trains his Rottweiler to attack the cat, and schemes to gain control of an inherited estate; he wields crossbow and an old-fashioned gun. The cat teases and abuses a smaller dog repeatedly, then draws the big dog into a trap by calling him a "girly dog." The dog bites a man in the crotch and the butt on separate occasions; a man is ravaged by animal-orchestrated hijinks. Animals take over and trash a kitchen (a ferret gets drunk). Some potty humor.

Families can talk about Garfield's laziness and selfishness: How does his stint as a pretend "prince" teach him to appreciate his generous owner Jon? They could also talk about why Garfield is so likeable despite his many bad qualities.

Common Sense Media Review
Smarmy and smug, GARFIELD: A TAIL OF TWO KITTIES is the unwanted, unnecessary sequel to 2004's Garfield . Though the script includes some ostensibly clever references to literature (for plot, Twain's Prince and the Pauper, for title only, Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities), the majority of the film consists of dopey jokes about Garfield's insatiable appetites, selfishness, and laziness.

Voiced by Bill Murray, Garfield is quite brilliantly animated, nearly three-dimensional and seeming to occupy the same space as his human associates, primarily his owner Jon (Breckin Meyer, whose admirable effort to act opposite an animated creature is to be commended) and his owner's lady love, the veterinarian Liz ( Jennifer Love Hewitt, who is on screen only briefly, understandable because she has a real job now, on the TV show Ghost Whisperer , and no longer so pressed for work as when she appeared in Garfield ).

The plot, such as it is, begins as Jon tries to propose to Liz, but she's distracted by a prestigious professional speaking engagement in London. Jon follows her to England, hoping to make his move, with Garfield and the non-speaking wirehaired dachshund Odie (whom Garfield bullies mercilessly). Across the pond, they discover a second animated cat, Prince (Tim Curry), who has just inherited his dead owner's estate, leading the next-in-line human relative, Dargis (Billy Connolly) fiercely determined to gain hold of it. His efforts to kill Prince lead the other animals -- barnyard and household, voiced by estimable talents like Bob Hoskins (bulldog), Vinnie Jones (Rottweiler), Jane Horrocks (mouse), and Richard E. Grant (parrot) -- to revolt.

Dargis is so creepy he appears to deserve the Home Alone -ish violence directed at him, but the storyline is so unimaginative, it's hard to keep still even for the short running time of 80-some minutes. While kids at one screening laughed at the couple of fart jokes and Dargis' falling down and whimpering, for the most part, the movie left them cold as well.

Families who like this movie might also see the original Garfield , Stuart Little , or for another, more agreeable movie with talking animals, Babe . A similarly themed, all-animated film would be 101 Dalmatians .