Atrocious on all levels, decisions make no sense
Wow.
I thought I had already seen the worst possible 'Garfield' stuff with the previous movies, the silly TV cartoon, the memes and whatnot.
This is worse than anything Garfield-related I have ever had the displeasure to be exposed to. I didn't think it was possible to make Garfield look and sound this bad, while also being animated in a really generic and yet lackluster way.
Nothing looks like its supposed to, but there is just SO much more that's wrong.
I will list just a few things I ABSOLUTELY hate, and can't find ANY REASON for.
01) The eyes. Holy cow, how can they mess up the eye-look this bad? It looks like everyone is a cyclope. Err, cyclops? Try to figure out the plural and singular for that one. So everyone looks like they have only one, weirdly-shaped eye, but two retinas or irises or whatever you want to call them.
Would it have been THAT difficult to just have some kind of dark line inbetween the eyes, and also, have a dark outline around them as well, like they have in.. I don't know.. in the COMICS?!
Not to mention THEY DID THAT with the lower part of the eyes, so _WHAT_THE_F___!?!?!? Seriously? WHAT? WHY??
02) The WAY too common mistake of making people TALK WITH THEIR MOUTHS.
Garfield DOES NOT TALK.
Optimus Prime has no lips.
Dilbert has no mouth.
Yet some CEO said, we can't have that, we HAVE to change all these ICONIC CHARACTERS (!) completely so they will look like something different than they are supposed to, because we HAVE TO HAVE CHARACTERS TALK WITH THEIR MOUTHS.
Why? Garfield DOES NOT TALK with his mouth! He does all kinds of other things, he even smiles and such, but he DOES. NOT. TALK!!!! with his mouth!
Garfield THINKS with thinking bubbles! Did these moviemaker mong0s NOT REALIZE the difference between a thinking bubble and a speech bubble?! WHAT THE F?! WHY MAKE EVERY CHARACTER TALK WITH THEIR MOUTHS?
I hate it in EVERY three occasion, Dilbert looks like an idiot when he talks with his mouth in the cartoon, when he never does that in the comics (unless he enrages, which is rare). Optimus Prime should NEVER, EVER have lips, it's more mysterious and cool, gives a bigger - and slightly more appropriately robotic - commanding presence when he just see the masklike part of his face move a bit when he talks.
HAD TO RUIN that, too.
And now this? Garfield just straight out TALKS?! Imagine if he talked in the comics, how weird would that be? Garfield is not a human being, he's a friggin' CAT, and the theories that Jon is just IMAGINING him 'speak' are valid, exactly because in reality, no one should hear his voice, because he just THINKS, so it could very well be just Jon's delusion speaking.
But no, discard, dismantle and destroy ALL that for the sake of 'well, characters HAVE to talk with their mouths even if they don't do that in the original source material'-guy. Who the heck is that, the same idiot that made Lion King remake look as 'realistic' as possible, although even real animals have more expressions than shown in that turd?
Thinking about this makes it look even weirded - I mean, on ONE hand, we have to have super realistic-looking lions that can't have ANY (not even as much as real lions do) facial expressions, but they CAN talk and sing. But on the other hand, if we are going to have a robot, a nerd or a cat on screen, we HAVE to make them 'talk realistically'?
I don't get this weird nonsensical logic. Just let things be the way they originally were, okay? Why not?
03) Moustache. Garfield's upper lip was never supposed to look like some foamy moustache, but now it ABSOLUTELY does. WHY? Why ruin this part of his aesthetic?
04) Look at Garfield's ears. They are clearly not functional ears, they look like some plushie that has PAINTED 'black shading part' taped to them, not any kind of ears that have actual earholes or whatnot.
05) Why does everything look so wrong and weird? Lasagna looks like candy layers, Garfield's body looks like it's made out of clay with some weird velvety cover attached to it.
I could go on - and on - but this is enough for not, or I will figuratively explode. Not literally. Stop mis-using this word, nothing is 'literally' what you claim it is for the most part, and I know they even changed the definition, so I would be wrong, but fk that, STOP MIS-USING it!
Who asked for this, who wanted this? Could this BE more lazily made? Why does the voice 'acting' sound like layers of AI done on separate days and places? Why is everything worse than I could've imagined?
Also, the 'sad piano music' with the 'poor cat' stuff doesn't really work. Jon is supposedly depressed and lonely, but a 'cute kitten' cured AAALL that! Hurrah!
Except that Garfield has made Jon's quality of life (and mental health) drop down to abysmal levels, not to mention how much money he has lost because of everything Garfield has destroyed, how Garfield has prevented Jon from socializing (how many dates did he ruin?), and so on.
Doesn't make sense!