I found this: http://shadylane.sharkface.net/garfield/

Garfield live action movie!? I refuse to believe this is real.

I saw the poster for it at the theater I frequent. I think I'll pass this one up. If I'm lucky maybe I'll even not see the trailer.

Oh boy, if they try to take him to the vet, hilarity is certain to ensue.

Somebody get me a lasagna!

*Prepares for hoots of derision*

When I was much younger, my sister and I possessed a Garfield video. I realise there are a few of these around. This was the one with the Halloween episode smack bang in the middle.

In this cartoon, Garfield dresses up as a pirate for Halloween. About a quarter of the way through the episode, a song occurs, the text of which I will reproduce at the bottom of the post.

My question is: is the song original to Garfield, or is it some old pirate ditty I've just never heard before. Because ... I really quite like it, and if it can be attributed as an original Garfield composition, I'm gonna be all conflicted.

-----------------
Sixteen men all off to sea,
All of them drunk except for me
'Twas I who had to brave the storm
With nothing in sight to keep me warm

with a Yo-Ho-Ho-Ho
Over the raging seas we go!
Yo-Ho-Ho-Ho
Wherever the forward flow! Ho.

(or something like that, I'm working off decade-old memories here).

someone please shoot me in the head, this is like making FAMILY CIRCUS into a movie, or Opus, or the farside, yeah, lets make a FARSIDE live action movie.

What a load of illconcieved crap

Unfortunately, this movie [imdb.com] does exist and apparently it's going to mar the reputations of actors/actresses that i liked.

I'll just cross my fingers and hope for a successful film like Scooby-Doo.

In Response to AsphaltBuffet (#11729):

Where did I put that mop [goats.com]?

No, not for drool.

For the irony just dripping off of I'll just cross my fingers and hope for a successful film like Scooby-Doo

Those are screengrabs from the trailer.

I actually saw the trailer last night, and here's my reaction. I've used it on two other message boards already, and I figure that I might as well get as much use out of it as I can, since it's so damn long.

---------------------------------

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/garfield/

Anybody who's known me for more than 5 years or so knows that I've always been a huge Garfield fan (though the strip has really gone downhill in recent years). When I heard that they were making a Garfield movie, I was excited, but then I heard that they wanted to do it live-action. With a CG Garfield. Hmm.

"Why don't they do the whole thing animated? Why don't they at least hand-animate Garfield?" are questions that ran through my mind, but I eventually decided that they could still make it work if they got the CG Garfield to look good, and look just like the comic version, only with visible fur and other nice texture effects. I just crossed my fingers that they wouldn't try to make him look more like a real cat, like they did to Scooby Doo in his movie.

Guess what they did. Well fuck, that's right. They made him look more like a real cat. Why make him look like a mutated tabby when they could either make him look completely realistic or completely cartoony? Why the in-between version? If he's going to be cartoony anyway, why not go with the original version?

Well, now I've seen the trailer, and my wariness does not seem unfounded. I think the CG Garfield looks terrible as a representation of the Garfield character, but for what it is, it actually looks really nice. The fur effects look amazing, and it moves really nicely, but I still don't see why they didn't just do that to a Garfield model that looks more like the cartoon version.

But ok, whatever. I can learn to live with that. So anyway, I watched the trailer, looking for other characters. Obviously Jon is going to be a real person (played by Breckin Meyer of Rat Race and Road Trip fame), and I think the casting on Liz the vet is perfect (Jennifer Love Hewitt).

Oh, and then there's Odie. Played by a real fucking dog. Let me repeat that. Odie is played by a real dog. This just makes me want to scream obscenities over and over again.

Ok, in order for a mutated CG Garfield to work, they need to have a mutated CG Odie, a mutated CG Nermal, and a mutated CG Arlene. In fact, they need to have ALL the animal characters (or at least the pets) be CG. Otherwise, it makes Garfield stick out like a sore thumb. It just makes it scream "hey, the main character of this movie isn't real". I just really hope that the Odie in that trailer is only a stand-in.

So, there's my 2 cents. I think there was more, but I've forgotten it.

On the positive side, I think their casting of this movie is really good. Not just the human characters, but the voice actors too. THE Bill Murray is doing the voice of Garfield (the original, Lorenzo Music, died in 2001). I couldn't have picked a better person to do his voice. GREAT choice. They have Debra Messing (Grace from "Will and Grace") doing Arlene's (Garfield's on/off girlfriend) voice, as well as Brad Garrett (the deep-voiced brother of "Everybody Loves Raymond"), Alan "Nightcrawler" Cumming, Jimmy Kimmel, and some other familiar faces doing voices.

The director is your typical Hollywood hack, but the script was written by the two guys who are most responsible for the Toy Story story. The special effects company is the same one that did Scooby Doo (go figure), so I guess we now know who to go to for crappy-looking cartoon character re-vamps, though in their defense, they've also done some incredible stuff for tons of other movies, including the two X-Men movies, Lord of the Rings, and the two most recent Batman movies.

God, I hope this movie is at least decent. But it'll probably suck horribly.

The IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356634/combined
And just in case you don't want to scroll back up - the t...

Read the rest of this comment...

In Response to AsphaltBuffet (#11729):

You had me all the way up to:

I'll just cross my fingers and hope for a successful film like Scooby-Doo.

The only great movie-based adaptation of Scooby that has ever existed is the pot-induced hallucination during Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

In Response to FeldmanSkitzoid (#11733):

Oh, and then there's Odie. Played by a real fucking dog. Let me repeat that. Odie is played by a real dog. This just makes me want to scream obscenities over and over again.

Yes, this truly sucks.

Also, who suddenly decided that normal cartoon animation is too base for a theater film? I'd probably not go to see a cartoon-based movie about Garfield, but I definitely *won't* go see a live-action version.

I think the best fusion of cartoons and live actors was in Roger Rabbit, where the characters were animated by hand (mostly), rather than being 3D, computer-generated blobs.

Somehow, Garfield looks so less real in 3D than he does as a couple of lines with flat coloring in the Sunday comics.

That's my 2 cents.

In Response to Deathalicious (#11741):

Yeah, i get confused when people use sarcasm too.

In Response to Deathalicious (#11743):

I'm a poor student. I only have 1 cent. Dammit, I've used it already!

In Response to FeldmanSkitzoid (#11733):

Oh, and then there's Odie. Played by a real fucking dog. Let me repeat that. Odie is played by a real dog. This just makes me want to scream obscenities over and over again.

As maybe you could guess, I'm not a huge Garfield fan. But the live action Odie makes a lot of sense to me (no kidding here). Since Odie doesn't talk, why should he be CG? This underscores Garfield's true insanity as he is trapped in the netherworld between man and beast. Either way, you are perhaps getting a little too worked up about the Garfield movie. Wait for the next Star Wars movie.

In Response to deerboy (#11769):

Wait for the next Star Wars movie

Why wait? Like there's a possibility it might not suck? Episode 3, Worst. Star Wars Farse. Ever.

In Response to deerboy (#11769):

I think it would look bad when Garfield pushes him off the table. In the comics, it sometimes seems that Odie is made of pure rubber, and once he hits the ground he just stands up and walks away. But the dog in the trailer being pushed off the table wouldn't be as funny, because he might conceivably get injured, and of course the animal rights nutjobs would get upset, and it'd get all annoying after that.

As for Star Wars (and maybe we should start a new thread), I think it'll be better than the previous two. How can a movie where the good guy becomes the bad guy NOT be good?

In Response to FeldmanSkitzoid (#11789):

I think it would look bad

Like the rest of the movie.

If they are going to make a Garfield movie then there is only one way that it would work. Sock Puppets. Sock puppets with angry faces. ARRRRRR angry sock puppets.

In Response to Yoshi (#11908):

Or possibly puppet socks.

They look like ordinary socks, but are secretly controlled by a shadow organisation looking to gain a stranglehold over the sock nation.

In Response to themysticalone (#11910):

So that's what happened to the other half of my socks.

i actually heard about this quite some time ago, and after a disgusted shudder, tried to force it from my mind. now you've brought it back. thanks.

on a movie plus note:

Only 559 days 11 hours and some until Batman: Intimidation.

I can't seem to contain myself. Sometimes I think about it, and just start grinning.

In Response to goat_girl (#11932):

Also, 2 months to Kill Bill:Volume 2

yay!