Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties

All of this just works. ― Todd Howard

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Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties
More like a tale of 2 pieces of compost!
Genre: Comedy Directed by: Tim Hill Produced by: John Davis Written by: Joel Cohen Alec Sokolow Based on: Garfield by Jim Davis Starring: Bill Murray Tim Curry Billy Connolly Breckin Meyer Jennifer Love Hewitt Bob Hoskins Photography: Color Cinematography: Peter Lyons Collister Distributed by: 20th Century Fox Release date: June 16, 2006 Runtime: 85 minutes Country: United States United Kingdom Budget: $60 million Box office: $143.3 million Prequel: Garfield: The Movie (2004)

Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (Also known as Garfield 2 onscreen, and released in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Oceania* under this name) is a 2006 American family comedy film, and is the sequel to 2004's Garfield: The Movie, based on the comic strip Garfield (or in PAL regions, based on the comic of the same name) and stars Breckin Meyer, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Billy Connolly, Ian Ambercrombie, Roger Rees, Lucy Davis, Oliver Muirhead, Bill Murray, Tim Curry, Bob Hoskins, Rhys Ifans, Vinnie Jones, Richard E. Grant, Jane Leeves, and Roscoe Lee Browne.

Plot

Jon Arbuckle plans to propose to his girlfriend Dr. Liz Wilson, who is going on a business trip to London. Jon follows her to the United Kingdom as a surprise; After escaping from the kennel, Garfield and Odie sneak into Jon's luggage and join him on the road trip. Garfield and Odie break out of the hotel room due to boredom, then get lost.

Meanwhile, at Carlyle Castle in the British countryside, the late Lady Eleanor's will is read. She leaves all of Carlyle Castle to Prince XII, her beloved cat who looks just like Garfield. This enrages the Lady's nephew, Lord Dargis, who will now only get the grand estate once Prince is out of the picture. Lord Dargis traps Prince in a picnic basket and throws him into the river.

Garfield inadvertently switches places with Prince: Jon finds Prince climbing out of a drain and takes him to the hotel, while Prince's butler Smithee finds Garfield in the street and takes him to Carlyle Castle.

In the grand estate Garfield is residing in, he receives the royal treatment, including a butler and a team of four-legged servants and followers. Garfield teaches his animal friends how to make lasagna, while Prince learns to adapt to a more humble setting, while in Jon's company. Lord Dargis sees Garfield and thinks Prince has come back - if the lawyers see Prince/Garfield they will not sign the estate over to Dargis, who secretly wants to destroy the barnyard and kill the animals to build a country spa. Dargis makes many attempts to kill Garfield, one involving an unmerciful but dim-witted Rottweiler, Rommel.

Eventually, Garfield and Prince meet each other for the first time (spoofing the Marx brothers' mirror gag). Jon, with the help of Odie, discovers the mix-up and goes to the castle, which coincidentally Liz is visiting.

Garfield and Prince taunt Dargis, whose plan is exposed, and are seen by the lawyers. Dargis threatens everyone if they don't sign the papers to him, taking Liz hostage. Garfield, Prince, Odie, and Jon save the day, Smithee alerts the authorities, and Dargis is arrested. Garfield, who had been trying to stop Jon from proposing to Liz, has a change of heart: He helps Jon in proposing, and she accepts.

Why It's Still Worse Than Any Monday

1. Jon, Odie and other characters are still not looking like what they look like in the original Garfield comics.
   • Jon is still an unlikable owner here.
2. Garfield is once again an unlikable, one-dimensional character who has had little to no character arc from the first film. In fact, at two points during the film, he even admits he only cares about himself after realizing the consequences of his actions.
3. The royal cat, Prince, who looks similar to Garfield does not act like a royal person/creature at all, as he is way too immature, dumb, and foolish.
4. Speaking of Prince, his character appears to have been a literal copy of Garfield's photorealistic character asset than even something that resembles an original character.
5. In addition to the above, the royal cat is somewhat pompous, unlike Garfield, who is slob.
6. Very poor attempts at humor, such as Garfield burping in various scenes and a brief fart joke to go along.
7. The scene with the animals in the barnyard looks like it was rehashed from Dr. Dolittle, which is another Fox film.
8. Most of the new characters are uninteresting, especially the animals and the villain, Lord Dargis.
9. The animals themselves serve no significant purpose in this movie, aside for stopping Lord Dargis and making lasagna with Garfield. With that said, the animals can be written out of this movie and there wouldnt be any significant diffrence.
10. There is a couple of filler, such as the lasagna making scene and Winston playing tug o war with Rommel.
11. When Garfield teaches the animals how to make lasagna, "Pump It" by The Black Eyed Peas plays, although the song has nothing to do with the scene, nor does the song have a meaning that relates to a topic the scene mentions/uses.
12. Bill Murray hated voicing Garfield in the first film, but for some reason, he reprises his role in this film, the motives behind his return are currently unknown.

Redeeming Qualities

1. There's less product placement than in the first film.
2. Bill Murray still did a pretty good job at voicing Garfield despite what was said in BQ#9 plus Tim Curry is excellent as Prince
3. The lasagna making scene can be considered satisfying to some.
4. The CGI animation for Garfield (and Prince) is great, and an improvement from the last film.
   • Also, Garfield's character design is still faithful to the source material just like in the first movie.
5. The concept of using the Prince and the Pauper story is very interesting since it’s rarely used in other films.
6. Just like the first movie, Garfield is still the main character, with the humans being very secondary.

Reception

Like the first film, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties was met with negative reviews from critics. The series received a 10% on Rotten Tomatoes, the consensus reading, "Strictly for (very) little kids, A Tale of Two Kitties features skilled voice actors but a plot that holds little interest." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 37 out of 100 based on reviews from 20 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, the same grade earned by its predecessor.

Trivia

• Following this, a trilogy of CGI animated films by Paws Inc, were released between 2007 to 2009. As well as a Sony animated movie starring Chris Pratt as the lead role.
• The game this movie spawned is one of the only Garfield games so far to be multiplatform besides Caught in the Act, Garfield (2004 game), and both versions of Garfield Kart. It's also the only game to have completely separate versions on different systems, one for the Nintendo DS, and one for PS2 and PC.
• The home video release has an exclusive comic strip made to tie in with the movie by Jim Davis, in the Special Features menu.
• In Australia, despite this movie being known as Garfield 2, the most recent DVD bundle containing both the live action movies uses the American name instead.
• The film actually got released on VHS on some countries like Poland, South Korea and Japan
  • For some strange reason, the Japanese release has trailers for adult oriented films like My Super-Ex-Girlfriend despite this movie being family friendly.

Accolades

The film was nominated for two Golden Raspberry Awards in 2006, one in the category "Worst Prequel or Sequel", and one in the category "Worst Excuse for Family Entertainment", but lost to Basic Instinct 2 and RV, respectively.

External links

• Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties at the Internet Movie Database
• Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties on Letterboxd
• Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties on Metacritic
• Roger Ebert's review of Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties
• Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties on Rotten Tomatoes

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