A tasty mission. The review

It’s difficult to think of scenes more closely linked to the history of cinema than those depicting the protagonists jumping onto a moving train. However, it was equally difficult to imagine that at some point Garfield would also be the one to throw himself onto a moving convoy. Just him, the bourgeois feline par excellence. This happens in Columbia’s new animated feature Garfield – A tasty missiondirected by Mark Dindal (former director of The Emperor’s New Groove And Chicken Little).

In this new adventure the famous couch potato cat created by Jim Davis and voiced for the occasion by Maurizio Merluzzo, abandoned when he was still a puppy and whose passion for food had led him to look for accommodation with John, must deal with the own past, accomplishing a feat alongside his usual dog Odie and his father Vic, a stray with whom he has no connection.

The film then becomes a very entertaining heist movie characterized by the bodies of the protagonists. Yes, because although one of Garfield’s main characteristics has always been his gab, in this case the comedy is embodied (literally) above all by the physical dimension. On the one hand for the continuous reference to the roundness of the protagonist, symbol of his bourgeoisisation away from the nature of a feline, represented by contrast by his father Vic. On the other hand, for the continuous slapstick gags that reign supreme, starting from the two sequences on the train, the first close to the one seen in Freaks Outthe second more action-packed and which openly references (complete with soundtrack) the first Mission: Impossiblebut with Garfield who in both cases moves like Buster Keaton of How I won the war.

Cell phones and apps also play a central role in the story. In a cinema that often takes refuge in period operas precisely so as not to take on the risk of dealing with new technologies (a paradox compared to the centrality that these have in everyone’s life), the film shows a world in which there is a application for anything, to quickly solve the problems of any individual, human or animal.

Garfield – A tasty mission it is therefore an action heist movie, an excellent comedy on certain contemporary customs, a touching father-son story and also a sentimental film (there is also this), with the great advantage of managing to be all this in 101 excellent minutes for an afternoon in the company of your family.

Original title: The Garfield Movie
Director: Mark Dindal
Original Voices: Chris Pratt, Harvey Gullén, Samuel L. Jackson, Snoop Dog, Hannah Waddingham, Nicholas Hoult, Cecily Strong, Brett Goldstein; Ving Rhames, Bowen Young, Janelle James
Italian voices: Maurizio Merluzzo, Ciro Clarizio, Monica Ward, Simone Mori, Oreste Baldini, Gabriella Borri, Flavio Aquilone, Laura Romano, Roberto Gammino
Distribution: Eagle Pictures
Duration: 101′
Origin: USA, UK, Hong Kong, 2024