Entertainment

The Garfield Movie: Enjoyable, refreshing take

Unpredictable rollercoaster, hardly any dull moments

Published

May 27, 2024

I watched the advanced screening of The Garfield Movie armed with a wealth of knowledge about favorite fat cat. I’ve seen both of the live-action versions in the 2000s where Garfield was voiced by Bill Murray. I’ve also enjoyed Garfield comics regularly growing up.

Those who’ve come to be a fan of Garfield knows him and his life very well. He hates Mondays, loves lasagna, and blurts out sarcastic lines in thought bubbles which his owner Jon doesn’t really hear anyway. That’s his character that has defined newspapers and digital spaces for over half a century.

I wanted to wait until the end of the film to make my judgement, knowing that it’s a new take. I was right. Here are a few thoughts:

Puts Garfield at the forefront

This version puts the orange cat at the center of it all. That’s unlike the two live-action movies I mentioned. There’s less screen time for Jon (since the movie doesn’t revolve around him), and in the parts he’s involved, it’s comedic enough. I felt the second live-action (Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties) particularly, Jon’s wedding plans with Liz gets in the way of the main storyline.

In contrast, this film is mainly about Garfield. Sure, there’s his dad Vic, but we all know that. I’m also glad we didn’t get just a cliché father-and-son narrative. In the end, it was a fun adventure that focused on what Garfield can bring to the big screen.

Expansion of what we know

The first 10 minutes or so of The Garfield Movie introduces the titular character as the one we know in the comics. The typical elements like pizza, lasagna, spiders, watching TV, and refrigerator runs were packaged in a superficial manner.

Then, it expands on what we’ve already seen in the trailer where he was “abandoned” by his father Vic. Or so that’s what Garfield thought. We’ll get to more of that in a few.

Rollercoaster ride

The main storyline is then introduced when Garfield and Odie are kidnapped by Jinx’s assistants. Apparently, Vic owes Jinx a debt and the main antagonist decides to serve revenge by pitting Vic (and Garfield and Odie) against the ropes.

Believing that doing Jinx a favor will make them even, Vic takes Garfield and Odie to Lactose Farms, where they need to steal thousands of bottles of milk as repayment for Jinx. There, they encounter Otto, a bull who served as the former mascot of Lactose Farms before a change in ownership forced him out of the facility.

Realizing that his love interest, a cow named Ethel is still inside Lactose Farms, Otto decides to help the trio so they can all accomplish their goals. However, Jinx double-crosses Vic and informs the business’ security beforehand that a heist is about to happen.

This is one of the first twists in the movie. I personally enjoyed that it was made unpredictable so viewers are kept glued to what’s about to happen next. I also love how characters just kept being revealed, giving viewers an idea as to how big the story actually is. Moreover, Otto’s substoryline was aptly laced onto the main plot.

Entertaining, refreshing

In between these parts, Garfield showed how indifferent he was at first to Vic. We all know he believed is father left him for good when he was a kitten. But eventually, the truth is revealed, and Garfield warms up to his dad.

Back to the planned heist, Garfield’s crew fails to follow Otto’s original plan to free Ethel. This is as they got trapped in the facility’s cheese room. After the set-up by Jinx, Vic is forced to “leave” Garfield and Odie again to escape. Jon’s pets, meanwhile, were apprehended and ended up in the city pound.

While incarcerated at the pound, Garfield realizes how Vic had been watching him grow up from a distance. He also realizes Vic was saving them by stealing the milk truck so Jon could pick them up. As everything becomes clear to him, he decides once and for all to help his dad.

At the original place where they were kidnapped, Garfield discovers Jinx’s evil plan to dump Vic under the bridge from a speeding train. He uses the help of several hundreds of drone deliveries of pizza, meatballs, salad, and more, battling Jinx and her assistants to free Vic and save the day. In the end, they triumph, and Vic is welcomed to Jon’s place to have dinner regularly.

Enjoyable

The entire journey from Lactose Farms to Garfield’s team’s impromptu training with Otto to the heist attempt and his reconciliation with his father was consistently entertaining. Aside from the story being unpredictable, the makers inserted a lot of Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes-like slapstick humor to draw regular giggles.

We all didn’t know what was going to happen until it unfolded, and that’s an applaudable mark of keeping the audience hooked. It was an enjoyable story that’s cartoonish enough but not too exaggerated nor out of this world. I felt the film’s length was also just right.

Final thoughts

I get why some Garfield fans are upset as to why the film didn’t reflect the comics as accurately as possible. But for what it’s worth, the makers behind this movie promoted it with the heist as the key idea. But fine. If you want to call it “A movie starring Garfield” instead of “The Garfield Movie,” go ahead.

I’ll be upfront: It’s still a good, entertaining, and refreshing take on our favorite cartoon cat. It actually feels great to come across a lot of new characters and elements in this movie we haven’t seen in the comics. And even then, towards the end of the film, Garfield saves Vic doing with something he knows best: food. In a way, that’s sticking to the core.

Sure, there a things that could have been portrayed more obviously. For example, Garfield being superior to Odie or him gobbling up all the cheese in the world at Lactose Farms. But in the end, that hardly matters.

This is a one-off film meant for younger audiences. And the makers managed to stitch together a cool story that takes them on an enjoyable rollercoaster ride with hardly any dull moments. So yes, for all the “Garfield shouldn’t be that energetic or going on an action-packed adventure” and whatever an actual orange tabby should be doing in real life, it’s also good to leave that and suspend disbelief every once in a while.

Because if we wanted to stick to the grumpy, Monday-hating, lasagna-loving narrative, then let’s just stick to reality. That’s already how we feel on a daily basis especially as adults, right?

The Garfield Movie hits Philippine theaters starting May 29, 2024.

Related Topics:Chris Pratt Columbia Pictures Garfield Samuel L. Jackson The Garfield Movie

Entertainment

Street Fighter special look: Blanka vs. Ryu

Jason Momoa, Andrew Koji’s characters face off

Published

August 2, 2026

GadgetMatch

Paramount Pictures has released a new special look for Street Fighter featuring Jason Momoa and Andrew Koji.

The short, minute-long clip shows the actors’ respective characters, Blanka and Ryu, in battle.

It opens with a chained prisoner struck by extreme electrical charges, transforming into the green-skinned, electricity-infused Blanka.

He unleashes a fierce roar. Meanwhile, Ryu drops into a fighting stance, but tells Blanka he does not want to fight him.

Forced to defend himself, Ryu then fires a signature Hadouken fireball towards Blanka, as the teaser cuts to the Street Fighter title card.

Street Fighter debuts in cinemas starting October 14. It is directed by Kitao Sakurai and stars an ensemble cast that includes Noah Centineo as Ken Masters, Callina Liang as Chun-Li, Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoai as Akuma, and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson as Balrog, among others.

The film is set in 1993 when estranged Street Fighters Ryu and Ken Masters are thrown into combat when Chun-Li recruits them for the next World Warrior Tournament.

Entertainment

Now Playing: Spider-Man: Brand New Day

It’s a must watch for Spidey fans who want to see Peter Parker enter his sad boy era.

Published

July 29, 2026

Luigi Leonardo

The Holland-led Spider-Man trilogy is one of my favorite franchises in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Compared to other series with admittedly disjointed plots, all of Spidey’s storylines have a clear thread leading from one to the next. Since the fourth entries after trilogies are historically lackluster, I had a lot of trepidation heading into Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Thankfully, all those worries were unfounded. Brand New Day follows the same throughline as its predecessors, once again reinforcing Spider-Man as the strongest franchise that Marvel offers fans today.

A brand new day indeed

Coming from No Way Home, Brand New Day still has Peter Parker live a new life as a literal nobody where no one remembers who he is. So begins his existence as just Spider-Man with no friends or family.

When a new and unseen threat ravages through New York City, Spidey starts to wish that he still had friends to help him out, which leads him on an inevitable collision course with Ned and MJ. Ironically, it also leads him to other characters in the city, including the Hulk and the Punisher.

A cacophony of villains

When I first saw the trailer, I was worried about the astounding number of villains from the get-go. After all, one of the biggest problems in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, the most maligned entry in Spider-Man movie history, was the villains. Though far from the movie’s biggest problem, having too many bad guys without a solid plot led to its terrible reception. You can see why Brand New Day’s trailer raises some flags.

If you were thinking the same thing, Brand New Day does indeed have a cohesive plot. Everything flows neatly into one another. Each emotional beat of Peter feeling for his solitude mixes well with the action. In here, fight scenes feel like they have a purpose.

And there is a big bad here. It’s not just a collection of guys that Spidey has to go through. That big bad, who shall not be named at this time, doesn’t feel like just a placeholder for Peter’s internal struggles. They have a character of their own and their own struggles to solve. I wouldn’t say they’re at the level of Loki just yet, but they definitely have a better go at it than most of the MCU’s other villains.

Marvel’s New York City finally debuts

Despite being a prime location since 2012’s Avengers, New York City never really felt like the quintessential city for superheroes in the comics. In the movies, the city was just another city to be ravaged when a new villain comes along.

For the first time, Brand New Day makes the city feel like a lived-in world with a bunch of superheroes living in the neighborhood. And they do pop up.

Does Peter have a scientific problem that only a very specific hero can solve? It’s a good thing Bruce Banner is just around the corner. Does he need some muscle? Well, the Punisher is skulking around somewhere. Plus, there’s even a succinct reason why other superheroes can’t help out.

In this way, Brand New Day presents itself more like a comic book series than a one-off movie. It’s like following the story alone from issue to issue. It’s not the most perfect adaptation of the landmark city, but it goes a long way from just another ravaging of New York.

Peter’s sadness

Everything here hinges on Peter’s loneliness. Despite meeting a trove of characters across the cinematic universe, Peter yearns for time with his loved ones. But they’re gone.

Unlike the past three films where he always had someone to go home to, he has no one here. Tony Stark is dead. Aunt May is gone. Happy has gone to parts unknown. Ned and MJ have no memory of him. Brand New Day has a way of making you feel for his aches, whether the way he still keeps track of MJ or some physiological changes as a result of his predicament.

It also helps that the movie’s big bad has similar motivations. Both serve as perfect mirrors against each other, elevating both their stories effectively. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a few steps behind from being a perfect Marvel movie, but it’s still an extremely strong part of the Spider-Man mythos. The trilogy, now quadrilogy, remains Marvel’s most consistent franchises to date. It’s an absolute must-watch.

Entertainment

UNDERTALE: The Determination Symphony hits Makati in October

Determination arrives in October.

Published

July 28, 2026

Luigi Leonardo

For so small of a game, UNDERTALE quickly made it into the gaming world’s hall of fame. Despite being only a decade old, the small title has had a major influence for modern-day gamers because of its unique gameplay, its lo-fi art, and, of course, its catchy soundtrack. If you’re a fan of UNDERTALE’s soundtrack, a unique concert experience is headed your way.

On October 17, Film Concerts PH, in partnership with SOHO Live, is hosting UNDERTALE: The Determination Symphony at the Proscenium Theater in Rockwell, Makati.

The concert will be performed by the Filharmonika Orchestra and conducted by Thanapol Setabrahmana. Personally curated by creator Toby Fox and developed by Lambert Jackson with Materia Music, the concert experience showcases the game’s most recognizable tunes laid over gameplay footage playing simultaneously. Plus, for the world tour, the experience will have expanded scoring.

In the game, you play as a small child stuck in the mysterious Underground filled with interesting characters and monsters. Unlike traditional RPGs, UNDERTALE asks players to choose between building relationships and chasing after wins. It’s a unique experience that’s defined by whether you chose to make friends or fought your way to the top. It teaches players to value different ways to solve problems, all while showering them with its one-of-a-kind humor.

Pre-sales for the concert, exclusively for members of the Film Concerts PH community, start on August 4. Public sales, however, will start on August 11 via Ticketmelon.