Ep.#454 - The Garfield Movie

On this episode, we discuss the Garfield movie, the story of a farm boy who rose to become America's president before being felled by a madman's bullet.

Love lasagna, eight Mondays.

Hey, everyone, I'm Dan McCoy.

Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington.

My name's Elliot Kalen.

So I was

just laughing at the way Stuart said his name, which seems like you've got a little extra sauce on it.

Yeah.

Put some stank on it.

That's what Dan told me to do.

Yeah, I said, make it extra stanky.

Ask and shall receive.

He was my favorite of the original little rascals.

Extra stanky.

Pull that body that says stanky off off of the counter and squirt it all over that bad boy.

Um, put a little extra on there.

This is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

Uh, and this time around, always,

so it's a well-known thing in Dan McCoy lore

is a well-known thing in Dan McCoy lore.

That my birthday is also the birthday of one Garfield T-Cat.

Uh, what's the tattoo for the oh, and um,

not just you know, like uh, not just the day, but the first Garfield's trip was on the day I was born.

And he celebrates his birthday every year on my birthday.

So it's an extra treat.

I'll open the newspaper.

I'll be like, what sort of half-joke exists here?

What non-humorous, but, you know, sort of

slightly

smile-inducing things.

Mostly pleasant.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're really celebrating.

celebrating except for that except for oh i thought you were talking about your birthday

uh no no i like your birthday is mostly pleasant kind of a half joke you know i mean other than you know the the march to the grave that it represents i'm i'm a big fan um but uh yeah the march to the grave is a great title for your metal album dan march to the grave yeah so uh this episode will be coming out a couple days after but it's close and i said hey guys a couple days after your birthday yeah yeah because the audience doesn't know unless the audience already knows the date of the first Garfield strip or your birthday, they don't know that this is topical.

It's Juneteenth.

A more significant holiday than either my or Garfield's birthday.

I don't know.

Dan, you do have an NAACP Image Award.

Not a joke.

That is not a joke.

That's a joke.

Now, Dan,

you're saying that Juneteenth is not commemorating the day when the...

the last enslaved people of the United States saw Garfield for the first time.

No, no, no.

Fucking flip their lids.

Yeah,

this guy's so lazy.

Far more significant holiday.

But yeah,

that's the day of my birth.

I was not born on Juneteenth itself.

That would make me very old.

Make me very old, yeah.

Very, very old.

But I said, hey, there was a new Garfield movie out.

You know, just why don't you pander to me, guys, for once, for once in your lives.

Let's do this, Garfield.

Yeah.

Yeah, you really had to twist our arms.

You really had to bleed.

Yeah.

Yeah, the man who I think sent out his birthday RSVP three months ago.

Hey, you know,

you know why that is, though?

I know so many people who have birthdays within like

10 days of mine.

So I really need to stake a claim.

You really need to stake a claim on people's Juneteenth plans.

Yeah.

Because he didn't want them to celebrate freedom when they could be celebrating Dan McCoy.

We're not doing it on the date.

That would be crazy.

It's a Thursday.

No, no.

Yeah, he needs maximum attendance so that people can fawn all over him.

Okay, all right.

Yeah, yeah.

You don't like attention, Stuart.

I love it.

This is when the cracks start to show.

Yeah, this is, well, who knew that this was going to be the thing that drove us apart was the existence of Dan's birthday.

Guys,

can I, before we get into the summary of Garfield the movie?

The Garfield movie.

Can I...

Can I give a little bit of setup here?

Okay.

It's been a really long week for me.

I've been working a lot at my various bars.

I'm physically exhausted.

And I'm also emotionally exhausted from looking at my little rectangular glass thing in my pocket that shows me images of

the people you meet.

I call it a palantine, but yeah, you can call it a scrying glass.

You're interested in the

Father and Erie's mirrors that you carry with you.

Yeah.

Yeah, it shows me.

You haven't read those books, Dan.

You haven't read those books.

Okay, so it's showing me constant images of war crimes and civil unrest and just the worst people in the world stoking uh like stoking tensions on the world to enrich themselves coupled with various other capitalism type stuff uh you know things that bum me out and for me movies are an escape yeah so firing up the

garfield movie

i see filmmakers take the simplest idea a cat that is very lazy, likes to eat, and is sarcastic.

And somehow they deliver what might be one of the most soulless things i've seen

but you have such a fundamental misunderstanding of a very simple character yes yeah and you're saying wait you're so you're saying that when you imagined a garfield movie a character that the audience knows well this character has been around for nearly 50 years at this point you didn't think the best story for garfield the lazy orange cat is to sneak into a dairy in order to reunite two cows that have fallen in love and been separated.

Problem.

Despite having no particular love for Garfield other than a fondness, you know, for a birthday and growing up in the 80s reasons, just like a vague sort of warm feeling.

I don't think it's a funny strip.

I don't particularly like it, but I have a fondness for him, so I still have the same problem.

There's certainly no mutts.

It's no mutts by Matthew McDonald, that's for sure.

I definitely have the same problem that Stuart had more.

Do you have a shoe guy?

Yeah, Dan loves Shoe.

This is a very simple premise that this movie seems to have no interest in.

I will argue with you on one thing.

I don't know that

people know, like, like youngsters know Garfield these days, Elliot.

Like, no

person is reading the comics page.

Certainly not the same way they did when I was a kid, where every year that new Garfield collection would come out, and it was the top seller of the Scholastic Book Fair at school.

Everyone was buying it.

Garfield was everywhere.

Certainly Garfield is not sitting around the house.

Certainly, Garfield Mania is not what it once was.

But that being said, if you're going to make a movie for kids about a lazy orange cat that loves to eat, this is

original IP.

This is not the movie that you make.

We should say, like, Elliot, you know, for the young people in the audience, Elliot is not overstating the popularity of Garfield.

There was a time in which you could not pass a car without seeing that furry orange cat

suctioned to the back car.

Garfield was...

very close to being elected president of the United States, I feel like.

Yeah, I mean, there was a president named Garfield, but I guess they can have two, right?

The Bushes did it.

We could do it.

Yeah, there's two Adams, two Bushes, and they would have been fathering.

Two Adams?

Yeah, and they would have been fathering.

Charles Adams was president.

Yeah, Dilbert, Scott Adams was president.

Ugh, what a terrible president he would make.

That different from the current one.

Exactly.

Anyway, but

he'd be like, if our current president was a vegetarian, that's basically the only difference.

But yeah, because Garfield the Cat was the son of James Garfield, the original president.

So it would have been a similar one.

But no, Garfield was the most popular comic strip other than Peanuts for years and years, right, guys?

I feel like other than the Charlie Brown characters, there was no one more recognizable on the comics page than Garfield.

You know, and

television specials.

We watched

Garfield and Friends, which is a great show, which is a great cartoon show.

Yeah, with U.S.

Acres.

Yeah, hell yeah.

Yeah, the U.S.

Acres, the cartoons, which were like, it's like they're just saying to America, hey, kids, use the bathroom for a little bit.

Now,

the Macy's Thanksgiving

day, a balloon with the meme that I love of whoever the announcer was saying, ah, here comes that son of a gun, that cat, that Garfield, that gigantic thing.

Part of it is, I think for me,

Jim Davis

is a really fucking talented draftsman.

Like, he's delivering super crisp, clean art that I found very appealing.

Well, his assistants are now.

Whoever's working for Jim Davis is doing a great job.

At the beginning, okay, yeah.

Like, you're not going to knock various manga artists because they have a league of uncritical.

No, I'm just like,

I laugh at the idea that Jim Davis has drawn a Garfield strip since I don't know.

But I mean, like, he probably drew some of the ones in the 80s.

Yes, sure, for certainly, for sure.

Certainly.

But this is not a Charles Schwartz

level of devotion to making it a single man's artistic statement.

I mean, he wasn't in the fucking movie.

programming the digital models and stuff.

It's a good point.

It's a very good point.

He was like, how can I make this look worse than my drawing?

I mean,

again, a fondness for Garfield and Garfield has a second life now, I think, in like memes, stuff like Garfield without Garfields.

And like, yeah, because

he's such an enormous cultural artifact, you know.

But he did start out too.

Like, you know, Stewart has praised Jim Davis.

Now I come to bury him.

Like, he, he, he designed Garfield.

The stated purpose of Garfield was what would be good for merchandising.

He, like, looked around.

He was like, okay, well, there's a dog.

There's no big cat, you know, and he's like, let me give it a few traits that that will be good for you know coffee mugs

i may have read this wrong but i read somewhere i think that um it was either inspired by charles schultz or charles schultz giving him this advice that it was like you should have garfield stand on two legs because in those early garfield strips he stands like a cat he's on four legs all the time and then it was like a lightning bolt you know inspiration revelation that if he stands on two feet he can be that much more kind of like

smaller, rounder, expressive, cuter, you know, that's part of the secret.

He's a bipedal cat.

You know, guys, let's get into the Garfield movie and find out why it has upset Stuart so much.

Why this might have led to the one

that broke Stuart Wellington?

We're going to find out.

And we should make it very clear.

We're not talking about Garfield the Movie from 2004.

That is a 21-year-old live-action movie.

That's the word where Bill Murray does the voice of Garfield.

That was the movie which, while promoting it, with Jennifer Love Hewitt went on the Daily Show and

John made her feel bad by accident by talking about what a dumb movie it was.

But this is the Garfield movie, not Garfield's the movie.

And we should have that.

And Stuart, to set the stage for Stuart's madness,

and not my madness, I don't mean insanity, I mean his anger.

It could be both.

Yeah, it did drive it.

He did call me up after watching it and say something about how he could see the Fnords, and there was non-Euclidean geometry all around him.

And I was like, this movie's driven you mad, Stuart.

There's some very key things about Garfield.

Garfield is lazy.

Garfield is sarcastic.

Garfield does not particularly seem to like his owner, John.

These are all things that are not true of this movie's Garfield.

So they touch on it briefly.

Garfield, he's lazy.

He's gluttonous.

He loves lasagna.

He hates Mondays.

He hates spiders.

He hates this cute cat named Normal.

And he is very condescending

towards his ostensible owner.

He is clearly the one who runs the house.

And that's, yeah, that's Garfield.

Like, that's it.

That's all of what's Garfield.

That's a Garfield.

That's the thing.

Yeah, that's what Garfield means to me.

When a cat hits your eye with like a big lasagna pie, that's a Garfield.

So, and this, yeah, this movie kind of hits some of those bullet points early on and is like, forget everything you knew about Garfield.

Time to do something different.

Yeah, so before we get a bunch of backstory, we see like Garfield lives with John.

They live in a house.

He lives, they also have a dog named Odie.

Now, Odie is one of, I would say, the biggest mischaracterizations in the movie.

They make Odie smart in this movie.

Yes.

Yes.

And they make them, you know,

compatriots rather than, you know, Garfield tolerates Odie at best.

Yeah, I feel like the running gag is him kicking Odie.

Yes, indeed.

And also that Garfield uses a phone for quite a bit of the opening of this movie, which seems like a real fuck you to the audience.

Like, hey, guess what?

You're going to got to this character just using a screen for a little bit.

So then we get a little bit of backstory.

How did we get here?

How did we get ourselves in this mess where this cat is running this man's life?

Well, it begins with Garfield as a baby, which I'm like, already we have a baby, a cute baby Garfield.

And I'm like, that was fucking normal, dude.

And the whole existence of normal was Garfield hating him.

Like, why do we have like a cute version, a cuter version of Garfield?

Because we've got to make Garfield this incredibly popular character for 40 years.

We've got to make him likable, Stu.

We got to get the audience on his side.

We got to give Nicholas Holt more chances to do the voice of John Arbuckle with, I have to say, One of the stranger performances that I've seen from Nicholas Holt, who is an actor I love.

I've seen him do so many great performances.

I've seen him do so many different interesting voices.

And this whole time I was like, this is not the best use of Nicholas Holt.

Holt.

Well, also, we have to see Garfield as a kid because we can give him daddy issues, which is the only thing that Hollywood understands.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Daddy issues, or from point, actually, that's true.

It's two kinds of daddy issues.

Either your dad left you, or you're a dad, and you don't have time for your kids because you're working all the time.

Those are two things that Hollywood understands.

The only daddy issues I like are the People Magazine special issue focusing on Pedro Pascal.

So it's much more wholesome than I thought.

Yeah, I thought it was going to be much more, much more overtly sexual.

Don't ask Stewart about his bear issues.

He keeps stealing my honey.

So in Garfield's backstory, he has a father who is a large alley cat named Vic who abandons him in a alleyway.

I don't want to stop you right away, but I will.

And

so the cat, Garfield's voice, as all voices are these days, is Chris Pratt.

And the dad is Samuel L.

Jackson.

And what, and I was torn between being like, well, I'm pro-colorblind click casting and being like, is it racist that we're giving him a black-sounding father who abandoned him?

Like the deadbeat dad is the black father of a white cast.

Wow.

This is, Dan, you are, you are noticing a problematic thing that I feel bad I did not pay attention to, maybe because I was already so not looking for meaning in a Garfield movie.

I will say Chris Pratt has a hard, hard, has got a hard row to hoe here because Garfield's voice, it's a couple different people have done the job, but for me, it will still always be Lorenzo Music, who did his voice in the early specials.

It's a little Easter egg in the back.

There's a music store in the back called Lorenzo's Music, which I had to explain to Charlene, and her eyes glazed over immediately.

She was like, wait, Lorenzo Music?

You mean Carlton, your doorman?

And you go, oh, he was more things than just Rhoda's doorman.

The voice of Peter Frankman in the real Ghostbusters.

Exactly.

But yeah,

how do you guys feel about Chris Pratt's performance as Garfield?

He's really putting on an interesting new voice, right?

He is not.

Just doing his regular voice.

Like, Chris Pratt has done good voice performances in the past.

Yeah,

drop a couple on us.

No, the Lego movie, I think, is good.

And then, like, I was not,

you know, I did not really care about like the whole like Mario controversy.

I'm like, eh, whatever.

It's like, it's not great, but like.

Pratt is an Italian-American name, right?

Well, I mean, the fact, I think the fact, to be honest, the Mario character as a, as a New York Italian-American, probably does sound more like Chris Pratt than it's Sami Mario, which is not a, which is itself a cartoonishly Italian voice.

I'm just saying that like, I, I don't think it was like a great voice performance, but it was certainly, it certainly had energy, whereas this has, to my mind, very little energy or effort.

Which, I mean, on some level fits the character Garfield.

Yeah, but when he is, but when he is intentionally lazy, when he is surfing on food being delivered by a drone, because he's fighting evil dogs on top of a train, you do want a little bit of energy from the character.

Okay, so.

Oh, remind me, by the way, I watched this movie with my younger son.

Remind me when we get to the late movie to tell you about when my younger son pitched a punch-up on one of the jokes in it that I thought was much better than what they had in the movie.

I was very proud of him.

Yeah, so

we get some backstory.

A baby Garfield goes looking for food.

He finds, what, Mama Leone's pizzeria?

He sees John Arbuckle about to tuck into

some food, and he is like licking the window.

John Arbuckle is noticeably sad when he sees the families at Mama Leone's.

Then he's all by himself.

He is, yeah, he's a lone diner.

And I mean, I feel like that's also like a kind of a weird restaurant to go eat by yourself.

Like, go see the bar.

Go to the place from Nighthawk.

For Nighthawk's the painting.

Like, that's where you go when you're lonely is an Edward Hopper restaurant.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But he, you know, he takes people to the bottom of the room.

The movie theater.

Why not?

It's a great theater.

Yeah, why not?

Edward Edward Hopper never painted it, but that doesn't mean it's bad.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can just order food in the movie and then leave when you're done eating.

You don't have to do it.

Yeah, no one sees you alone because the movie's going on and it's dark in there.

Especially like if you eat gross like Dan does sometimes.

It means it's dark.

No one can see you.

I'm just joking.

We all eat gross sometimes, right?

I mean, when you're watching the substance, you got to eat gross, right?

Yeah,

that's the special ad with the substance.

Gross.

Yeah.

Eat gross the way you want to at the substance.

Okay, so there's some like hijinks in the restaurant where Garfield's eating everybody's food.

Doesn't matter.

John takes him home.

He's like, he's like, maybe I'll give this cat up.

And Garfield's like, no, no, no.

They love each other.

Takes him home.

The scene where Garfield is eating all the food and John is trying to stop people from noticing it.

I turned to my son and I said, so is this funny to you?

Like, do you find this like funny?

Are you like?

Is this like a clown?

Does it amuse you?

And he just turned to me and shrugged and went,

I don't think he knew that it was supposed to be funny.

Like that's, that's how not successful it is as like, a joke, you know.

So it does highlight kind of the general like scene structure in a lot of this movie is just make it fast.

Make a lot of stuff happening fast, which I feel like on some level goes against a very lazy cat like Garfield.

Now, can I mention that the director of this picture,

so on the low end, Sidney Lumay?

Yeah.

Wow.

Lumay.

How continental of you.

On the low end, directed Chick and Little.

on sort of the neutral end uh cats don't dance uh and on the high end uh emperor's new groove uh and

screenwriter too right for emperor's new groove uh i don't know i don't know about that oh yeah he was like this guy he was he was it's this is mark dindle he's a longtime disney animator yeah and i think that this movie has some moments of like

successful slapstick And the problem is it's just tied into a movie that it should not be part of.

Like there was stuff in here that I'm like, well, I could see myself enjoying this if this was not a Garfield movie, which is part of the problem with like the obsession with IP because like this doesn't feel like a Garfield movie in the first place.

So if it's just an unrelated kids movie, I'd be like, yeah, whatever.

I mean, it's not really for me, but there's a couple of like laughs in there.

Kids would like it.

If it was called Cat's Son or something like that.

Cat Jr.

Cat Williams, something like that.

Yeah.

And so there's a part at the end where Garfield keeps stepping in the way of traffic and all the cars have to stop short and they're getting annoyed at him.

That's a funny part.

That was timed really well, you know?

Yeah.

But it doesn't feel like Garfield.

It feels like something a different character would do.

So we see the passage of time.

John moves out of an apartment, moves into a house.

They gain a dog named Odie.

We see them getting into all kinds of goofy situations where Garfield basically is now running this house.

He has a nice big lazy boy.

All this stuff.

This shows you, this is another thing I feel like.

I feel like people who make, obviously adults make these movies, not kids.

But I think they sometimes don't really get what kids will be interested in because the transition from an apartment to a two-bedroom, two-bathroom house is something that I don't think kids need mentioned or to see necessarily.

John Arbuckle could just be in a house the whole time.

It's not something that

he cares about.

You're coming out in favor of child labor.

You're saying that more children should have been involved.

Yes, very much so.

Exactly.

With their little hands, they can draw things better.

Dude, all we need to do, I think it's pretty straightforward.

We take kids, we shove them in front of that Zoltar machine or whatever, make them big, okay?

Then they can give us their fucking idea.

Make them get around

labor laws that way.

That's why

Roger Loja.

Robert Loja knew what was going on.

Robert Loja knows.

That's how you get good toys.

It's like there was a, in the Dogman movie, which we did not do for this podcast, I believe, but which I saw with my children.

There's a

missed one.

I kind of stopped paying attention partway through.

But it's fine.

I mean, the Dogman books I came to really appreciate eventually.

They get very emotionally rich at a certain point.

You hear about the supporting character who eventually becomes king of the north from the first law series by Joe Abercrombie.

Exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

That's what it's, but the, the, the, but there's a part in it where dogman is like sad because his, but before he became a dog man, he had a girlfriend and now she has left him.

And I was like, what kid cares about this?

Like, who, what kid wants there to be a romantic subplot in their movie about a cop with a dog's head who fights a cat and makes robots.

Like, come on.

There is like as soon as they started giving us backstory about how Garfield was abandoned as a child.

I'm like, what the fuck are you doing, Movie?

Like, we don't need this.

And what we also don't need is a sequence where Garfield explains why he hates Mondays.

Yeah.

Like, bitch, part of what makes Garfield so approachable is that he hates, he doesn't, this dude doesn't even have a job and he hates Mondays.

Well, the thing is, we, everybody identifies with that.

Everybody on the planet hates fucking Mondays.

Yeah, this was not, this is not.

Certainly a unique observation.

I believe I've seen this out in the universe, but it is odd that Garfield hates Mondays, seeing that he does not have a job.

And the reason most people hate Mondays is that

they work a regular work week.

You know, not everyone, but many people.

And so Monday represents

that makes sense.

That makes sense, Dan.

But if I could ask you just one question, isn't there something inherently comical in a cat hating Mondays when it does not have a job?

Isn't it almost a ridiculous juxtaposition leading to a humorous reaction or an ironic

so much of Garfield is to elicit a like a gentle nod and being like, Yeah, Garfield, food is delicious or whatever.

Yeah, I don't think

the comic ever makes that sort of connection, though.

No, you're right.

That makes sense.

That makes sense.

Comics are better when they explain the jokes and they don't let the audience find it.

Yeah, like it's that makes sense.

Like it's Agni Noms.

Maybe I'm poisoned by knowing that Jim Davis wanted this to be, you know, a merchandising bonanza, but I feel like his hatred of Monday

feels Feels like something that is just like, oh, this would be good for posters.

You're right, you're right.

Merchandising is always bad.

Like, don't the peanuts shill for Met Life, Daniel?

Don't you love them?

But that's not part of the strip there.

Like, Snoopy isn't like going up to like Sherman.

Like, you got to get a

policy.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

Because Garfield does a lot of product placement in its comic strip.

You make a good point.

You make a comment.

The comic, the Monday thing is from the comics.

But yeah,

so what do you think he's being paid by by the No Mondays Council?

Like, I understand.

I'm saying, you know, like, this will be a good thing to put on a

that seeks to uh connect with humans based on their their own personal frustrations.

That's bad.

I guess that's good.

Clumbo, you're getting really irritating.

Wow, he sounds like one of the like the most famous person in the cast.

He was clearly the murderer.

Columbo, you're getting really annoying.

You know, Lieutenant, this is

a little annoying right now.

you're picking apart everything you're right dick van patton you're right and i shouldn't be asking you all these questions

okay

columbo could you just go i don't want to be in this i literally can't i'm into i'm investigating a crime and you're the suspect okay well okay so no that makes sense that makes sense i should stop investigating the crime and do something else as a police detective Garfield Note

reviewing restaurants.

You're right.

You're right.

I guess Stuart, Garfield.

Garfield Nodi, go to get.

I'm still on my first plot card here.

There's not a plot to this thing.

Oh, wow.

There's too much.

Someone say too much for a Garfield movie.

I 100% would say that.

I feel like this is a movie that should have just been a collection of incidents.

Too much, but we can bullet point it.

I think a collection of incidents would be harder to, anyway.

Well, that's, I mean, that's basically what the Garfield collections were, and those things rocked my shit.

They're bad.

I'm just saying.

It's harder to summarize only when nothing's important.

So Garfield and Odie are trying to get Garfield a late-night snack, and when they get kidnapped by Roland, Nolan, and Barry, a large Sharpei, a Whippet, and a bird, who are goons.

It's always goons around the flop house.

Yeah.

Should be called the goon house.

That's a different podcast.

Okay.

It's mostly about lube.

Yep.

They, I mean, there's a lot to talk about there.

But there's a lot to talk about.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Does that make sense?

It's a complicated subject.

They kidnap Garfield and Odie

for their Master Jinx, a,

what kind of cat is that?

It's a white Persian cat.

White Persian cat voiced by Hannah Waddington.

Now, these are all celebrity voices.

Because Roland is Brett Goldstein, Nolan is Bowen Yang.

Some would say that there are unnecessarily famous voices, as with many animated movies.

Now, I thought you were going to point out these are all new characters.

Instead of hanging around with Garfield and Odie and John and Liz, the veterinarian that John annoys and

Arlene, yeah,

the waitress, right?

Yeah, well, no, that's just his girlfriend.

His cat girlfriend.

Cat girlfriend, but yeah, there's also a waitress, like any of these characters.

It's just like, no, no, no, no.

Here's a bunch of other characters from whatever unrelated script this started out as.

Now, I would say.

Well, we'll address each of these characters in turn, I'm sure.

We'll give them a real ranking.

And I would say as giving a

ranking, yeah.

As much as giving Garfield a sad backstory, I think, is a misstep.

This is where the movie really, I was like, oh, okay, I don't know what this movie is going to be.

Like, I don't know what's going on here.

When Garfield and Odie are kidnapped by these genuinely, like, genuinely menacing, unpleasant characters.

Garfield and Odie get kidnapped by Jinx using her through her henchmen as an attempt to draw out Garfield's absentee father, Vic, who is some kind of like near-to-well type scoundrel cat,

a real McCavady.

Yeah.

Well,

he's like a low-level McCavity, maybe even more of a Bustafer Jones.

Now,

Vic is the absentee father who abandoned baby Garf, and Garf found John.

Jinx needs to be.

We've done jokes about the world according to Garf at some point, right?

Yeah, of course.

Now, also, there's some additional backstory where we learn that Jinx wanted to be like a special cat, but wasn't successful and then fell in with a bad crowd stealing things.

This is all dumb bullshit.

Unnecessary.

So much backstory.

Just be a villainous cat.

We don't need to know the tragic reasons.

So Jinx was a cat for its crime.

I do like some of the character design on Jinx.

I like the way that she has, I like her kind of like bell-shaped body, and I like that she has this like string of gems that glow different colors based on her mood.

I think that's interesting.

They do something.

Everything Everything else I don't like.

Every time she switches from

friendly to evil very quickly, in fact, the lighting changes, that all looks really fun.

It's fun, yeah.

Yeah.

It does feel like a character from a different movie, but it looks cool.

And they occasionally play that up by showing her henchmen actually using a flashlight to cause lighting effects.

I think that's fun.

But Jinx needs Jinx.

Do you ever wonder

how they made their base in this abandoned mall and how they got Garfield Nodie hanging?

It seems 200 feet in the air, you know, from the ceiling of this movie.

I did not wonder that, despite my

love the lines that you say about how I love backstory.

Uh, theater.

Oh, yes, you must have been loving all this Jinx stuff.

You must have been so excited about it.

I was not wondering about any of it, I just accepted it because it was a cartoon.

So,

in part of her backstory, Jinx was running around with Vic and committing crimes.

And while she was betrayed by Vic, when they were trying to steal some milk from what, Lactose Farms is the name of the thing.

And as a lactose intolerant person, I am not a fan of this.

This makes me upset.

Also, it makes me upset to see a cat drinking milk all the time because I know that gives cats diarrhea.

Yeah, it's bad for cats, but I mean, I would think that you're happy that this milk is being stolen and thus taken out of the ecosystem.

Yeah, it's less likely to go with the milk.

I mean, I know this is all cat milk.

You know, this is

why the humans who can process lactose probably were going to get some of this milk.

No, I'm saying it won't go to Stew.

Yeah, it won't go to the mouth.

Yeah, you're right.

Because if cats aren't stealing it out of the factory, Stu has to drink it.

That's the law.

Legally.

So she.

Whenever America and Russia signed the first salt treaty, Stew always lactose tasting that stated that Stewart, to keep peace between the two nations, Stewart had to drink a lot of milk.

Yeah.

You know, it's always bad for you.

Yeah.

So using some questionable leverage at this point,

Jinx convinces Vic, Garfield, and Odie to go back to Lactose Farms and steal a very large quantity of milk as kind of payment for the time she spent in the pound.

This was something that my younger son also explained to me was that he said, why does she want all that milk?

It's going to go bad before she can drink it.

I'm like, that's a good point.

It's a very good point.

You can't

drink that much milk.

No, it's not the most shelf-stable.

treasure.

Well, also, the street value of milk is almost nothing because if someone tries to sell you some milk in the street, you're like, where did this milk come from?

Well, it's like a cart.

The minute you take it off the lot, the blue book value goes way down.

Just drops.

So

our heroes set off riding the rails.

They

sneak aboard a train cart.

Yep, Dan.

Now, this was like the moment in my life where I felt the most like

the comic book guy, like the nerd.

I guess it wasn't the comic book guy, but it was in the One Simpsons episode where it's like you hit the skeleton in the same place and it made two different uh sounds like he hoped someone was fired over that yeah yeah yeah i was watching this there's a part where uh garfield is shot from like a tree limb uh through the the train he goes through an open train car goes out the other side and then bounces back and goes through the same train car and i'm like no that train car would have gone forward yeah like there's no way he could go through the same train car and i was uh and then i was like what am i doing why do i care

dan i hate to say it i had the exact same thought process where i was like there's no he wouldn't have been able to fly back to the same train but then i was like you know it doesn't matter it's it's the garfield movie yeah yeah so yeah this is also

one of the things through the same train car multiple times and it's totally hilarious this is one of those one of the times when uh i started to say it also and uh my youngest son turned to me and he goes he goes don't just complain through the whole movie don't just tell me you don't like the movie And then he wasn't enjoying.

When it was over, I was like, how was it?

And he goes, eh.

But he's like, don't just tell me what's wrong with the movie.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

So your son's a Midwestern, a polite Midwesterner who doesn't want to speak up.

Exactly.

You got to break him into that habit.

Okay.

He speaks up.

So we arrive, we arrive at the farm, Lacto's farm.

Unfortunately, security has increased quite a bit since the last time Vic was here.

It's all high-tech and intense.

Luckily, they meet Otto, a purple bull, who I thought was a yak for a while, but I think he's a bull

former Ving Reims, who I can guarantee you recorded all his lines while seated.

But also while wearing a cool hat.

I think my favorite performance in the whole movie.

I think he does

the funniest voice performance for sure.

He,

so this character was the former mascot of Lactos Farms, Otto the Bull, who it was

him and a cow, Ethel,

and they were deeply in love, but something happened and he got kicked out.

And she remains, I guess, under lock and key by the farm.

Is that correct?

So they want to heist the milk, and he's going to help them if they can heist the cow as well, essentially.

Why heist the cow if you can heist the milk for free?

You know, that's a good point.

While they're training and prepare

myself, while while they train and prepare Vic uh I think we get Vic's backstory here I think this was involved uh they get tied up to a tree and Garfield and his dad get in an argument and we get Vic's backstory where he didn't actually abandon Garfield he went off trying to get food but then he showed up too late and then he saw Garfield with John and like it's fucking stupid and he was like oh I guess my son's better off with this human which is I'm like yeah he probably is

yeah those though if you can buy food rather than having to scavenge it but i i don't know

he'll probably get fixed in so much as anything in the garfield movie elicited any sort of pathos for me there were some mild twinges when i saw like the dad being like looking at garfield being adopted basically in front of his eyes and being like huh i guess it is for the best

yeah yeah um no yeah not since the story of moses has some has someone had to see their their son uh be be taken for their own safety, and it had such pathos to it and such importance.

Yep.

Garfield, sort of the Moses of cats.

So

Otto, who has an understanding of the layout, but is much too large to sneak in, stays back.

They all put acorns in their ears, which work as

like radios.

Yeah, they're like little wonky talkies.

Our cats and dog friend all sneak in, pretending to be backpacks.

They go around inside this high-tech facility, which is very much

like a bunch of modern animation bullshit.

Like

there's a scene where Garfield is almost getting chopped up or shredded like cheese.

And you're like, it's all the fucking

mayhem conveyor belt sequence from episode two, Attack of the Clones, right?

Where a lot of stuff's about to smash him a little bit.

I got so mad.

There's a part, he's on a big block of cheese, and these big cleavers are chopping it up.

And he keeps running back and forth along the block of cheese.

And I was like, Garfield, you exist in three dimensions.

Go forward off the cheese.

Get out so you're not within reach of the blades.

And I was, I was like, just can't hear you.

I kept shouting and shouting, but he couldn't hear me, Dan.

He couldn't hear me.

I'm going on.

I was worried about him.

And I'm like,

what we have strayed so far from the just sarcastic cat who sits around complaining about shit.

The fact that he is running through a high-tech action sequence.

I hate it.

Meanwhile, Jinx makes a phone call to Marge Malone, the head of security at Lactos Farms, voiced by Cecily Strong,

who, you know, gives a pretty fun performance, I guess.

She's fun.

She's fun.

She's fine.

And

using a phone app that will be used repeatedly throughout the movie where the cats and dogs can change their voice to sound like a human.

So here's the thing.

And this really got to me because what this means is when Garfield is talking, he's talking, like he's speaking out out loud.

And in the Garfield comics, again, I hate to be the comic book guy.

Garfield,

John cannot understand Garfield.

Garfield doesn't, when he can speak to other animals or spiders or whatever while he's thinking.

But the idea that if the animals can use this app to change their voices, why doesn't he just talk to John?

Why doesn't he talk to any human being?

Part of the joy is that humans can use it to translate the animals.

Yeah.

And part of the joy is that John...

Like, it's Garfield reacting to John being an idiot.

Like, it's him, like, running a monologue and, like

talking shit.

Well, also, like, I understand why the security person needs to be able to translate this for plot reasons, but it was, you know, it was a much funnier joke.

I mean, not that I was like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, but it was a much funnier joke when.

you know, the Jinx is like calling up and like trying to frame the cat.

And like then you cut to the person on the other line and they just hear meow, meow, meow, meow, meow.

But if you, but like this app, it just, it fundamentally changes the nature of human-animal relations in a way that this movie, it's like in Zookeeper, how we talked about how the lion is like, we could always talk.

We just don't say it because it freaks people out.

And it's like, really?

You don't want to tell people to stop killing you and putting you in zoos?

Because it seems like that's a good use of language.

But it's a lot of the top uses.

No, yeah, they don't.

Being freaked out is worse.

It's a little bit like watching a romantic comedy.

If there's a romantic comedy where the guy's like, I really got to impress my date.

And he goes, I guess I'll fly.

And he just starts flying through the air.

I would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

This movie has just fundamentally changed what it's about.

Like, I can no longer care whether these two get together now that I know that man has conquered gravity in this movie.

So, yeah, they infiltrate the complex.

They think they're about to close in on the keys, but it turns out that Marge Malone, head of security, is there.

She talks some shit.

And then Vic manages to snatch the keys and leave Garfield and Odie behind.

He betrays them and he drives away with the milk truck.

Again, questions of how a cat is able to drive a car is not really

big enough to fit in the seat and hit the pedals and the wheel.

And also the truck itself, this milk truck, it looks like one of the war rollers.

So the size of the cat was the issue for you, Elliot, not the fact that the cat knows how to drive.

I mean,

at this point, I got to buy a certain amount.

I know

it bothered me that you have an animal translating app and it has not revolutionized human society, but at a certain point, it is a cartoon and I got some things I got to just go along with, you know.

I mean, we'll, I'm sure we'll talk about each of these OCs in time, but I do want to point out that I think it's a mistake.

Original characters.

Oh.

Yeah.

Is the, I think it is a design flaw to make Garfield's dad just bigger than Garfield.

Garfield should be the biggest of them.

It certainly makes Garfield look less like a lazy out-of-shape cat if his dad is, if he's one of the smaller characters in the movie.

Yeah.

Okay.

So then

I will say it is a little weird also that Garfield at the end of the movie cooks dinner for everybody, and John is not like, Holy shit, my cat is cooking.

And then it turns into one froggy evening.

He opens a restaurant.

You've got to see this cooking cat.

He won't do it for anybody else.

Yeah.

Not on Mondays, John.

What?

Oh, that's a good show.

We shouldn't have called the restaurant Mondays, the restaurant that's only open Mondays.

So,

TGI Mondays.

For their crimes,

Garfield and Odie are stuck in the pound.

And

while they're in the pound, they connect with a few of Vic's former crew who are all there, all voiced by more celebrity voices.

Snoop Dogg is one of them.

You got Snoop Dogg, you got Janelle James, and you got Angus Cloud, R.I.P.

in a final performance, which is wild.

And that basically just kind of fills out a little more of Vic's Vic's backstory.

More time spent talking about a character that isn't Garfield.

John shows up and he springs Garfield and Nodi from the pound.

They're about to tuck into a massive lasagna feast that John has prepared.

He had been going out of his mind missing his pets, which I understand when if my pets were missing, I would be devastated.

And that's when Garfield pauses.

He stops eating lasagna for a moment because he remembers the words that

Vic may have been watching him while he was growing up.

So he goes out to the tree that he believes Vic was hanging out in and he sees a

plethora of hash marks that Vic had made every single time he came to visit his son, which is also a weird thing to do.

That every time he came to watch Garfield, he put a

slash and then he would, you know, he would bundle his sticks.

He would do full like fives as a bundle all over this tree this is how long i've been in prison mark yeah it's kind of wild well he was always he was very like there's a cut scene where he talks about how much he was influenced by the batman villain zaz yes so that's why he loves those hash marks yeah yeah if you were to if you were to shave uh vic you would see that his body's covered in this

exactly yeah i I get that he's like supposed to be ashamed of everything or whatever and like he wants to keep his, he doesn't want to confuse Garfield maybe by like re-entering his life.

But this like revelation like

feels pretty empty.

Like, oh, oh, he was here watching me from a distance this whole time, never, you know, making contact.

Great.

That shows that he loves.

Not since the story of Moses, when Moses' own mother was, I guess, I believe, hired as his nursemaid and could not reveal her identity to him.

You know, I would say the idea of a shameful cat father is fundamentally not cat-like.

No, I feel like cats are, that's part of Garfield's appeal is that cats are kind of jerks.

I love them for it, just like I love Garfield.

But cats are not like, that's more of a dog trait.

What I think is really the bad thing is that they didn't take this opportunity to do a parody of the song Somebody's Watching Me by Rockwell called Some Daddy's Watching Me, which I think would have fit this scene perfectly.

Or a Cats in the Cradle bit, because, you know, they're

cats.

Cats.

Yeah.

Damn.

Other songs that could have fit this?

They could have changed it to Garf's in the Cradle.

I was too busy internally arguing with the idea that cats are jerks.

And the normal spoon.

You have to meet them at their level.

They're not going to give their love.

Feline eyes are watching you.

That could be another one.

Yeah, it took you a little while, but you got there.

Yeah, I got there.

Yeah, it took me a little bit of time to think out about it.

So with this revelation that Vic actually loves Hitman, was a good dad, but not a bad dad.

But

that he cared about him.

So they rush over to the mall that was Jinx's hideout, and using the evidence dungeon that Jinx had left, they discover that Jinx's plan is to get on a train and throw Vic off of a

Mile High Bridge.

What a clever plan.

Also, but it's playing off of the famous Garfield landmark, the Mile High Bridge.

We remember all the amazing Garfield stories that are set around this famously high bridge, right?

So they,

using their acorn earpieces, they contact Otto the Bull, and they get Otto to agree to help them save Vic by

doing a train job.

Otto's help seems not really necessary.

And here's one of the things that

they didn't wouldn't have known that was going to happen.

But so that he's like, you're going to get on that train.

And then just as it hits the bridge, you'll jump out with your dad and you'll land in a net that Odie is tying.

And while they get on the train, it takes them a little bit of time to get to the bridge.

So I was like, why don't they just jump off the train before they get to the bridge so they don't have to fall a mile into a net?

That seems like a better plan in some ways, you know.

So this leads to a bunch of action and

silliness, hijinks.

And Garfield saves the day by calling in 6,000 food delivery drones.

So he's like surfing around on pizza boxes and eating, I think he eats hot sauce and breathes fire on people.

This is really just a holding action, though, because by the time he's done with this whole action sequence of using food as weapons, everything is exactly back where it started.

He's still dealing with the same bad guys on the same train so he's really he's accomplished very little with this

there's a lot of uh also uh product placement in this film uh at the end i believe he like or like like explicitly orders uh

online from like like fedex delivers it and there's like a there's like is it walmart i forget what like target or something like it's it's all branded very obviously for a um an animated movie and and all that free advertising for mammalone's pizza sure that is that a real pizzeria okay no i don't think so you never know man i don't i don't know uh i don't know all the floodover states yeah you don't know where the cool cats uh

okay so uh

by the uh by the end of this uh train adventure uh jinx's goons turn on her they don't want to do her dirty work no mo in what would in what some would call an arbitrary plot twist i i just want to highlight the i i teased to you guys on text that there was one time when i actually laughed out loud It was when they jump off the thing, the train, they go to the net, and they said, like, like Garfield meets Vic on the, like, Vic is bouncing back up, and they meet in the middle, and he goes, net's too tight, or something like that.

And they both just, like, go right back onto the train after

escaping the train.

I thought that was a funny joke,

though.

Yeah.

One time I did not laugh was when Garfield goes, that's right, I do my own stunts.

And then pause.

And me and Tom Cruise.

And it was like, yeah,

like, it's not funny to say Tom Cruise does his own stunts.

Like, that's not a joke.

That's just a.

If you just put that in there in case Tom Cruise is watching the movie, and then on your chat, I also do my stunts.

Leonardo DiCaprio meme.

Yeah, so he would then, after the movie, go up to somebody, some employee at the movie, at the AMC, and be like, hey, they mentioned me in the movie.

He talks about popcorn in his mouth like a madman.

He's like, did you see Garfield?

The Garfield movie talked about me.

He'd have to go to David Miskevich and say, make all the Scientologists go see the Garfield movie.

They mentioned my name name in it.

If you're going to do that joke, make a joke about an actor who you don't expect to do all their own stunts.

That would be, that's a joke, you know.

Yeah, who'd that be, Dan?

Oh, I don't know.

Uh, Paul Giamatti.

I mean, Paul Giamatti.

I feel like he might do it, actually.

But if he was like, He was like, I do all my own stunts, me and Tyne Daly.

I'd be like, Okay, that's a joke.

Uh-huh.

Okay, so in the process, not only do they survive.

I apologize.

We missed where I want to tell you about my son's punch up at the time.

I was fucking aching for this one.

Yeah, sorry.

Otto is about to launch Garfield onto the train.

And Garfield says to him, if I don't make it back, tell my story, which is kind of like, okay, it's kind of a boilerplate line.

And my son turned to me and he goes, he should have said, if I don't make it back, serve lasagna at my funeral.

I was like, that's a much better line.

Yeah, it's a good line.

It's more Garfield.

Yeah.

So they manage to, in the process, they survive and they capture Jinx.

They trade Jinx to Marge Malone

again using the voice changer.

This amazing animal translated voice changer.

They trade this criminal cat in exchange for the cow mascot Ethel for some.

This is a wild idea that the head of security is like, okay, yeah, you can have this cow because I need to punish this cat.

You can have the mascot to the company whose worth is, you know, must be in the millions.

It's a big millions.

Yeah.

In exchange for this criminal cat who I'm going to do what with?

Why is this of use to me?

Yep.

So, of course,

they trade Ethel the cow, who walks over there, sees Otto, and then Let's Get It On plays.

And we're like, I guess they're fucking

getting it on.

I mean,

I get it.

Like, again, Ving Reigns gives a really good performance.

And, I mean, I'd say that's a pretty hot cow.

I mean, I guess.

I don't have.

I've seen hotter.

I've seen less hot.

Thank you.

Okay.

And then so they get back home with John, and after a moment's hesitation, Garfield invites Vic to live with them.

So now we have this new character all the fucking time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That part of the family.

Really blew my mind.

Again, I have like this base level of familiarity fondness with Garfield, but I don't really give like a shit about Garfield as like an artistic endeavor because I don't believe it is, but it still blew my mind from Garfield.

That's a pretty good one.

That's a good one.

That's actually good.

They do some strange things with that book.

Yeah, but it blew my fucking mind that this movie ends with, like, and now this new character, Garfield's dead, lives with them.

You're gonna love this.

It's canon.

And there's in the like montage, there's the briefest moment where you see Normal, and I'm like, where the fuck was Normal this whole movie?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why?

Did he?

Okay.

There's a part of their eating cereal, and it's Abu Dhabi, probably.

It's

good.

He's still coming back from Abu Town.

Yeah, there's a part of their eating cereal, and Binky the Clown is is on the cereal box.

And I'm like, can't wait to see that clown in this.

Oh, wait, no, not going to happen.

Not in the movie.

Just an Easter egg for the fans.

So, again, Nirmal's barely in it.

We get none of the U.S.

acre dudes, including that fucking shell with the legs sticking out.

So let's talk about the OCs, okay?

I'm assuming these are all original characters.

Take his Orson.

I know.

So we have Vic.

Yeah, yeah.

What are our thoughts on Vic?

I've already said, I don't like him.

I think he should be bigger than Garfield.

I don't care for Vic.

It's not Vic's fault so much as it's just like, I don't like this.

Like, oh, we got to have a dad problem.

Who has so much time?

If it's a Garfield movie, why are you introducing a new character and making them, giving them kind of equal weight with the main character?

Like, why are you doing that?

We got Roland Walter.

Yeah,

it's a very Walter situation, very much.

With like, hey, people love the Muppets.

You know who they want to see?

A new character who's not even a fucking animal.

You got Roland and Nolan, the two goons, the like Sharpe and the Whippet.

I mean, I'll give them credit for having one big guy, one little guy.

Like, that's a classic comedy,

physical dynamic.

Otherwise, they seem to have very little personality.

There's nothing particularly funny about them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, like,

it's kind of a first thought idea to have Brett Goldstein be like a growly character, but he did a good job at it.

Ray Winstone wasn't available.

Yeah.

Nolan, I feel like, is a sub-weasel from Roger Rabbit type of villain.

Yeah, I mean, but those are, I mean, those are fucking

class.

Those guys are great.

Yeah.

Those are like, they're up there with salacious scrum when it comes to bad guys.

If those guys showed up in almost any movie, I'd be like, hell yeah.

You're watching Oppenheimer.

Well, we got the scientists for the project.

And it's those weasels from Roger Rabbit.

Things would fit, dude.

This fits the time period.

It would fit right in the future.

We need these

weasels.

They would get along so well with fucking Robert Downey Jr.'s character.

For sure.

Yeah.

Do we really need the one who's just brandishing a straight razor all the time?

You know we do.

He's going to use that to split an atom.

Yeah, of course.

God damn it.

And you know, when they show up in any movie, I'd be like, shar, shar, shar.

I know we're watching Portrait of a Lady on Fire, but the Weasels just showed up.

Paul Giamatti, there's a couple students you have to chaperone over Christmas at the school.

Oh, no, it's those weasels.

Even the one that's just laughing and bonking himself on the head all the time.

Okay.

The one with the beanie.

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're all students at this private boarding school.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

Weasel parents.

You can get in anywhere, no matter how goofy.

And most of them end up leaving, so it's just Paul Giamatti and that one weasel.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sure.

Just the one weasel.

He has a name.

Okay, so we've talked about them.

What about I feel like this is the whole mini we should do is just inserting those weasels into other movies.

What about Otto and Ethel, our counter characters?

Get to know Ethel that much,

but I'm sure she's wonderful because I'm fond of Otto, you know, so you know,

I think Rames's performance is strong.

I feel like they do not belong in this movie.

Yeah.

No, but his performance is strong.

And also, I will say this, Otto's personality, which is kind of like

bitter and resentful and sarcastic and condescending, that fits in a Garfield story.

That's the kind of personality that Garfield should have, as opposed to smiling all the time and being like, I love my life.

I'm Garfield.

But I think

that Otto, at least, it doesn't make sense for them to be helping, again, for them to be helping a bull rescue his girlfriend from a lactose, from a milk farm doesn't make sense for a dairy.

But his personality, at least, I could see

a sub-Ardman animation style milk factory.

Yes, very sub.

Yeah, but I could see a couple weeks of the Garfield strip where they go to a farm and Garfield is dealing with Otto the Bull for whatever reason.

Like they're on vacation or something like that.

And I think, oh, I guess, and Jinx the cat.

I've mentioned I like some of the design elements of Jinx, but also very unnecessary character.

Very secret life of pets rather than Garfield.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is

like a, I don't know.

This is like a Beverly Hills chihuahua, but a cat and mean.

Yeah.

So I think it's time for, what's that?

What's that, Dan?

It's final judgments, whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of liked.

I'm going to say bad, bad.

It is not a Garfield movie, let alone the Garfield movie.

Dan, check the poster.

It's the Garfield movie.

And again, like, I think if it wasn't billed as a Garfield movie, I'd be a little easier on it just because I...

have no preconceived notions about what something should be.

And normally I don't really care, but it's like, why, why do it this way?

Why approach it this way?

It's so weird.

There's some

like there's stuff in here that I'm like, oh, you know, like this would be perfectly fine for a small child.

There's nothing offensive in here.

Like there's some like fun slapstick stuff.

But, you know, for full-grown men such as us who should not be watching it anyway, I'd say it's a bad bad movie.

We're all big boys here.

We're grown-ups.

Beefy boys.

Yeah, so I don't,

you know, I don't, I don't work in animation.

I don't have a lot of experience working in animated things that might involve talking animals.

Of the three of us, I have the least experience with that.

But there was just something that felt so like they took Garfield, a character that I really cared about a lot for some weird reason.

And obviously, I know it's like, it's a brand.

Garfield is this weird cultural icon, but it just feels so strange to see this, like, just to see this character misrepresented this way.

and this character just kind of like stuck into a movie that he does not belong.

And he is not, it's like, it'd be one thing if it was like, we're going to take Garfield, but we're going to put him in like Barry Linden or something.

I'm like, well, that he doesn't fit in there, but it's still Garfield.

But like, he's not, he doesn't feel like Garfield.

But if you put those weasels in Barry Linden, oh my God, they would be so much more.

Perfectly.

Okay, so yeah, this is a bad, bad movie.

And I don't know, like, it just feels so emblematic of a of like an industry that is built around like cut and paste style stories and just like churning out garbage that's what it felt like like

not to be too cruel to the people making it no no yeah no churning out garbage i think you i think that that sounded very very interesting

i feel like the people who worked on it i feel like there is most likely an executive department that is more to blame than the people who worked oh almost certainly uh so i will i'm also going to call this a Bad Bad movie.

You know, like Dan's saying, it's not offensive.

I don't love,

like, there, there's not that much of like, here's a joke for the grown-ups, wink wink, uh, in it.

Um, it just, it feels like a misreading of what the things that people like about Garfield, the character are.

Now, I could be wrong.

Again, the movie made, uh, according to Wikipedia, it made $250 million of the box office.

What?

$60 million budget.

So we did okay.

There were no other kids' movies that same weekend.

Probably.

Probably.

But judging also by my, so like we, my, uh, my older son, he was with us when he was little when we did the uh boss baby family business movie.

He really enjoyed that.

My younger son really enjoys that movie.

I don't love it, but they really enjoyed it.

This one, watching with my younger son, he just was not that into it.

It was not that entertaining to him.

It was not that funny to him.

So I could almost buy it on the level of, it's not for me, but a kid would like it if I saw a kid liking it, that it feels like it, it didn't reach that bar either.

And so, again,

it's not so offensively bad that I'm like,

but it just, it fails to justify its existence in a way, other than that there's money to be had in Garfield.

So next time, Hollywood, when you do a Garfield movie, maybe just try to make it more Garfield-y.

Like, it doesn't need, he doesn't need a big backstory.

Don't need big action stakes.

Paul Giamatti would be a great Garfield.

Paul Giamatti would be a great Garfield.

Don't animate him.

Put him in a cat.

You would have to go

to live action Paul Giamani Garfield.

It's right on the shelf there with the Wallace Sean Ziggy that they should have made.

Like, Paul Giamani would be a great Garfield.

Yeah.

Hi, everybody.

It's Ellen Weatherford.

And Christian Weatherford.

People say not to judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree.

But we can judge a snake by its ability to fly, or a spider by its ability to dive.

Or a dung beetle by its ability to navigate with the starlight of the Milky Way galaxy.

On Just the Zoo of Us, we rate our favorite animals out of 10 in the categories of physical effectiveness, behavioral ingenuity, and of course, aesthetics.

Guest experts like biologists, ecologists, musicians, comedians, and more join us to share their unique insights into the animal kingdom.

Listen with the whole family on maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

The wizards answer eight by eight.

The cornclaves call to demonstrate their arcane gift, their single spell.

They number 64

until

a conflagration

63

and 62 they soon shall be, as one by one the wizards die.

Till one remains to reign on high.

Join us for Taz Royale, an oops all-wizards battle royale season of the Adventure Zone every other Thursday on maximumfund.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, this podcast is brought to you overwhelmingly by the support of listeners like you who are members at maximumfund.org.

But we do also have a sponsor this week, and it is Squarespace.

You know, maybe you want a website.

Maybe like Garfield without Garfield has already been done, but maybe Garfield with extra Garfield.

Like just stick a ton of more Garfields in the strips.

You can do that with Squarespace, which gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place.

Now, I don't know how you're going to get paid from this extra Garfield situation, especially because that's IP.

It's not owned by you.

You get sued, yeah, yeah.

No, but you could find, you can think of an idea that's almost as good as that.

Like a pizzeria restaurant that's Garfield-themed?

Again,

that was shut down for copyright reasons.

But you can get paid on time with professional on-brand invoices and online payments.

You can streamline your workflow with stuff like appointment scheduling built right in and email marketing tools.

And also,

you don't have to know how to design something.

You can be as lazy as Garfield because Squarespace also offers a complete library of professionally designed, award-winning website templates with options for every category and use.

drag and drop editing, styling options, visual design effects, no experience required.

So head to squarespace.com slash flop for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, use offer code flop to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Elliot, you do a lot of stuff.

I bet there's something you want to mention.

Oh, on Squarespace?

Well, just your own picture.

Oh, just the stuff that I do.

Yeah, I'll just plug the same stuff I've been plugging.

You know, I got my, there's a picture book I have out now called Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House it's a fun romp for kids of all ages

and

if you like that one maybe you'd like to try one of my other picture books that I've been out for a little bit horse meat's dog or sharko and hippo but but a sadie mouse wrecks the house is a new one also I still have Harley Quinn coming out from DC Comics every month I've been enjoying writing that I just handed in a script for what's going to be the 200th issue of all if you combined all of Harley Quinn's series together and it made me realize that this is already the longest run I've got to do on a series.

And if you keep buying them, I'll just be able to keep doing them.

So I'm excited to be on a book for a fair amount of time.

And I also have another book coming out in November, but I'll talk more about that later in the year.

Stuart, what about you?

What do you have?

Well, I'll always promote my three bars here in Brooklyn, New York.

That's Hinterlands Bar, Minnie's Bar, and now Commonwealth Bar.

And also, if you are interested in kind of like hanging out chill zone style, I do a regular weekly painting stream on Twitch, usually at 1 o'clock p.m.

New York time, where I just hang out on Twitch and I paint Lil Warhammer guys and I yap for a while and I answer questions in the chat and it's a nice fun, chill afternoon.

And my Twitch name is Stuart Wellington.

Easy to remember.

Sometimes I'll throw that on just so I can hear Stuart's, my friend Stuart's voice.

Yes.

Being like, and Dan did this.

And I was like, what?

And I'm sure, Dan, you also throw on my other podcast, Smartless Presents Clueless, to hear my voice, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, Smartless Presents Clueless, my puzzle podcast that I host and Sean Hayes is the star of.

That's right, Sean Hayes from Will and Grace and Smartless.

And the episodes are only about 12 to 15 minutes long, and it comes out twice a week, although I think we're going to a once-a-week schedule.

Check out that one, too, if you like puzzle podcasts.

Guys, I need to have something else going on.

You do.

We've told you that.

I mean, it's not like I'm not trying, but maybe we can figure something out.

Maybe we can brainstorm.

I mean, maybe you you use Squarespace to make a website where you just insert those weasels into all the different movies.

Oh, extra.

I think you should do a series of cooking videos on TikTok.

Yeah, I think you should.

The route to success for me.

Oh, my God.

I mean, it's either that or videos where you eat ice cream out of a toilet and people don't realize it's a joke and they get really mad about it online.

There's gold to be had in that toilet.

I mean, it's a very popular genre of video.

How should I cut off the names of these people who uh that's a good question sent us uh

uh letters i mean usually we just say the first name

no i know but uh

did i

is it did share send in a letter so you don't know how to say the last name with help because there's no last name no i just i i i when i cut and pasted this this time around i somehow Did not get the names in here.

What's going on, guys?

What's going on with my brain?

What happened to it?

Oh, no.

That's the side text that Elliot and I have.

Okay, well,

maybe you can let me in on what conclusions

come to.

So far, it's just been a lot of question marks.

Yeah, I apologize.

No shrug emojis.

I apologize very much to people who are not going to get their proper credit.

But

so this first letter is from question mark.

Question mark, question mark.

If this is you, feel free to give us a zero-star review.

Question mark.

Hi, floppers.

I'm a faithful flop listener since 2014.

And as a Parisian resident, I was so excited when I saw your under Paris episode drop into my feed.

At one point,

you were all wondering.

What did we get wrong about Paris?

Oh, boy.

No, no, no.

At one point, you were all wondering if JAWS ever got released in France.

And Stewart posited that it was called Le Jaws.

It's actually known as Dante de la Mer, which you could translate literally as the teeth of the sea.

Pretty cool.

Anyway,

the real mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, took a swim in the Sine to prove to everyone that the river is swimmable as it would be the site of the triathlon for the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Afterward, a newspaper ran a picture with her coming out of the water with a particularly toothy smile on her face.

The headline read, Les Dent de la Mer, spelled M-A-I-R-E, meaning mayor.

So, damn.

Question.

Gotta.

What's the best or worst pun you've ever seen from a movie critic about a movie they've seen?

Or do you have any punny headlines for any of your floppy

saved Gene Shallop headlines?

Thanks for a decade of great content here.

Well, more two at this point.

Here's

10 more.

Come to Paris.

We should do a show in Paris.

Yeah.

Yeah, what's stopping us?

I have to start finding venues in Paris to reach out to you.

If any venue in Paris would like to pay our travel fees and have us come over, we'll be happy to do it.

Do a show in the catacombs.

Yeah, that'd be super cool.

I don't know that I have actually an answer to this, but this was pretty

hard.

I'm a sucker for all pun-related news or reviews.

So do you remember any?

No.

No.

I'm an idiot.

Of course not.

I also, yeah, I'm also having a lot of people.

I kind of assumed you guys would be all over this shit because you're like pun maniacs.

I think the one that sticks with me the most.

I feel like your eulogies are going to be filled with puns.

Yeah, probably, yeah.

I mean, we're not giving our own eulogies, but

I'm giving Dan's and Dan's giving mine.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We'll swap eulogies.

Crisscross.

Crisscross.

No bodies.

They can't catch whose eulogy is whose.

I remember when I was a kid, and I was a huge fan of those ninja turtles.

I really loved them.

The Ninja Turtles movie came out, and I cut out one of the newspaper ads.

Because back in the old days, kids, if you wanted to know when a movie was playing, you had to look in the listings in the newspaper, and there'd be little ads.

Yeah, next to Garfield.

And there'd be little ads for each of the movies that would have quotes on them.

And one of the quotes was from, I think, Joel Siegel for the Ninja Turtles movie.

And I cut it out and it said, like, a shell of a good time.

And as a kid, I like didn't quite get it.

So he, was that, was he saying it was negatively?

No, no, he was saying it's a hell of a good time.

Okay, because, like,

you know, the pun, like, it seems like a shell of a good time would mean like it's a husk of a good time.

Yeah, yeah, but that's not what he was saying.

I don't think anyone was thinking that deeply about it.

Yeah, but that was the one that, that's the one that sticks in my mind the most, just because I think I had it on my room and my, on the wall of my room when I was a kid.

You know,

well, that works.

Did you learn the whole ninja rap when you were a kid or no?

No, I did not learn the whole ninja rap.

By that, by that point, I think I was no longer such, I mean, I did go see it in the theaters multiple times.

I made my grandmother go to see it.

Yeah.

I made her go to see it when I wanted to see it a third time, I think.

But I did not memorize.

Even by the time the ninja rap came on, I was like,

this is not what I come to the ninja turtles for.

Sure.

Is vanilla ice rapping this song.

Now I love it, though.

Yeah.

You come to this place for ninja turtles.

Yeah, yeah.

Somehow raps about ninjas feel good in a place like this.

Okay, well, again, apologies.

This is from question mark.

And I just want to mention, again, this is not a matter of editorial control.

This is not because we don't want to say your names.

This is merely that Dan made a mistake.

Yeah, and I could not find, I did make an effort to try and find the unedited emails.

Well, we're taping right now.

Sort of wanted to keep us moving.

Because that last one seemed like there was very specific French words you could have searched for, and not a lot of emails would have come up.

Yeah, after this, he's going to have to put on the Flophouse official hair shirt.

Yeah, right in, guys.

It's that thing thing where you have to sit on the like on a pole in the desert.

Yeah, or like, and they put weights on your ankles.

Oh, that's a different thing.

If these emails are from you,

please write in.

This is a good time for someone to buy it later on.

Someone could get some stolen valor, write in and say it was their email, and really it wasn't.

Yeah.

I've wanted to write in forever as your podcast was one of my saving graces when I was getting chemo for Hodgkin's disease in my late 20s.

And again, when I required mental health services, it truly helped me through some trying times, and I've wanted to thank you for years.

I really appreciate that we could be there for you.

I hope you're feeling better now, and I just wish you had a name that we could know about.

It's just too bad your identity is lost to history.

Unfortunately,

obviously, we've played a very meaningful part in your life, and that means a lot to me.

It really makes my heart swell.

And I just wish that Dan felt the same amount of importance towards you and could even remember to put your name in.

I'm really

firling, dude.

Now I can't find it.

I mean,

here's the real reason.

We have so much mail in the inbox that I need to clear it out.

And once I do a letter, it gets deleted.

So that's

why I thought maybe it would be saved.

Whoever you are, I can't wait to hear the rest of your letter.

And I and thank you very much for listening to us during those times.

I'm glad that we could help you through them.

Yes, it was.

I just wish, I just wish

ever find who this person was.

I appreciated hearing this so much and I feel so bad.

Anyway, unfortunately, I felt that I needed to tie that into these thanks into a real question, which I could never come up with.

I finally got it.

Roy Scheider, or more precisely, Scheider had an epic running.

More precisely, Shoy Ryder, his mirror name.

Scheider had an epic run in the 70s with Clute, The Seven Ups, The French Connection, The Marathon Man, Jaw, or just Marathon Man, Jaws, Sorcerer, and all that jazz.

Perhaps my favorite film.

I don't feel that he's ever really gotten his due for that.

Do you folks?

Can you think of any other actors or actresses with so much greatness and so little recognition?

I actually just recently watched The Seven Ups for the first time and

saw the

amazing car chase sequence in that thing.

I think I liked it more than the famous bullet and French Connection ones, actually.

And I had the same thought.

I was like, oh, Roy Schneider was on fire for

this span of time.

And I don't think he's talked about.

I can see

in your eyes, Elliot, you're imagining Roy Schneider literally being on fire.

Just if I said it right, I just remember when they put him in NBAG.

Yeah, Roy Schneider in turbo mode was on fire, yeah.

Yeah, he's crazy.

I had the same thought, like

he isn't really talked about the same way.

I was literally just talking to one of my bar regulars today.

Uh, he was, I think he was either a camera operator or a PA on something with Roy Scheider.

And he was talking about how Roy Scheider was very professional and like he was very calm, like he was a very still guy on set until the you know, action rolled.

He was my regular was really impressed working with him

i mean i think it's a

there's a i think it what it speaks to partly is how many movies used to get made and how many different kinds of movies and the different kinds of people who could be movie stars not that roy scheiber is not he's a handsome white man who does adventure movies a lot of the time like it's not like he's that breaking the mold that much but that you had so many movies like can you imagine um

like I don't I don't have someone in particular who comes to mind that answers the question exactly, you know, because there are a number of actors who had a great run.

And I feel like as they get towards the end of their lives, they start to get a little more recognition, you know, like I feel like

people didn't talk about Gene Hackman for a while and then he passed.

And then suddenly it was, people were talking about what an amazing actor he was in his run of movies.

But like the

something you hear a lot is, maybe not as much as it used to was, can you believe that Elliot Gould used to be a like a star who would carry movies, this guy?

And you watch those movies and you're like, yeah, I can believe it.

He's amazing.

He's an amazing actor, he's got amazing charisma.

Like, he has a great run of movies.

So, I can believe it.

Yeah, but he's just, you know, he's just the dad of Ross and Monika.

I mean, that's his, that's surely his crowning achievement.

Yeah, I mean, here's the thing, like, but that's specifically about like, let's be clear: Elliot Gould is a, is a handsome man with like a lot of charisma, but he's handsome in a very like specific, like, kind of goofier way that I think people are talking about.

Like, now,

like, big movie stars have to be beautiful, like, leading men music movie stars have to be beautiful but there's a um

i don't know not always but uh not always no but i think that that's what people are saying they're not like can you believe this guy this this is no but it's never

no but it's never or like they'll say the same thing about like donald sutherland who also you know passed relatively recently where it's like instead of saying it's I feel like it often gets said, and it's a different point than the question is making.

Instead of saying, oh man, things were so much, the variety of movies we had when these guys were big movie stars, instead it comes off as like, can you believe there was a time when people would settle for Donald Sutherland or Elliot Gould when they could have had a Harrison Ford?

Like, come on, guys, when it's, which is, I think, is not the right way to look at it, but it's, there's a, I mean, that's the nature of, you could say it's the nature of fame, you know?

It's, it's, you know, it's the, it's the bitch goddess.

It's, it, uh, it gives you, it, it gives and then it takes away, and you can't guarantee you're going to be around forever.

Well, it was like there was a, uh, during the third season of the White Lotus, there is some discourse, some weird discourse on the internet about dudes being like, Walton, you think Walton Goggins is a sex symbol?

I'm like, yeah, dude.

Look at that guy.

Yeah, I mean, well, I think that also

straight men being straight men, like, can't wrap their heads around the idea of like charisma not just being like, oh, this is the handsomest man.

This is the most clearly handsome man.

I mean, like, he's a handsome guy.

I'm not saying that he isn't, but, like, there's something interesting about him in the same way that, like, you know, I don't, I think it's obvious for us, like

you're not just attracted to like the most obviously beautiful person.

You're, there's someone who's interesting.

Yeah, it's like when I was watching the other day, when I was watching Fatal Beauty, directed by Tom Holland,

friend of the show, Tom Holland, and Sam Elliott gives Spider-Man himself.

Yeah, Whoopi Goldberg and Sam Elliott plays the like love interest.

And Sam Elliott is so fucking hot in this movie.

He really is.

It's like...

Well, but that's the thing.

Sam Elliott is hot.

I mean, that's the, like, he's a hot.

But like, it's more than just him being attract, like, being, like, good-looking.

He just, like, he sells this shit so well.

Like, he's got so much fucking charm.

It's just, yeah, this.

It's like oozing out of my fucking laptop screen.

Okay, well,

sorry again about the names.

Please write in.

But now we'll move on.

Sorry about not really answering that last question, but it's okay.

You know, we talked about something.

Yeah.

We got to talk about Sam Elliott being super hot.

As our friends at Jordan Jesse go say, what is a podcast if not saying words?

And we certainly did that.

Yeah.

But let's recommend some movies, movies that maybe would be a better use of your time.

Hey, I have an animated movie to recommend.

I actually highlighted this in Legend of the Overfiend.

I mentioned this in Flop Secrets.

Dan's like, I saw something that I I just found, it just felt like it was really saying something to me about the human condition.

It's called Ninja Scroll.

I want to recommend a movie by legendary animator Richard Williams,

The Thief and the Cobbler.

I watched the recobbled cut.

I had seen huge, huge chunks of this before, but I don't think I'd ever sat down and watched it.

you know, all the way through.

And part of that's because,

so this was a project that he worked on for decades and decades and it originally was released in a chopped up version that he did not like at all uh by mirror max it was like taken away from him uh and then there was this recobbled cut which is fan cut putting together you know the best elements that exist uh to get it closer to what Williams intended.

And when I say best elements, like, you know, some of it is literally just like animatics or sketches.

But what exists is

astounding still.

It is like

he was a genius animator, and it doesn't really work that well as a narrative, but as a work of visual beauty and animation skill, it's amazing.

So that's what I'm recommending.

I'm recommending a movie by one Rowdy Harrington, 1988's Jack's Back.

This is the movie before Roadhouse, and I would say it is not as good as Roadhouse.

I'm not going to go out there and make crazy claims, but this is a movie set in Los Angeles

where there is a serial killer going around on the 100-year anniversary of the Jack the Ripper crimes, committing mirror crimes, but in Los Angeles, which is weird.

The movie kind of abandons that part of the premise about halfway through.

James Spader is in it, and he's you know james spadering it up there are uh there's a surprise twins reveal not the movie twins but characters that are twins it is they don't surprise they don't reveal that they're actually in the movie twins it is a i mean maybe it's it's a wild ride yeah do the weasels show up the weasels I think they do.

I'd have to go frame by frame.

I will point out that Robert Picardo is in it,

playing like a psychologist.

And man, there's somebody else that was in it that was really great.

Everyone's favorite gremlin love object.

Oh yeah.

Chris Mulkey's in it.

Oh man.

Yeah.

Two thumbs up.

Yeah, exactly.

Mr.

Greta Gremlin himself, Robert Picardo.

So what I would say is it's not Roadhouse, but it's still a fun time at the movies.

Go check out Jack's Back.

I'm going to recommend another fun time at the movies.

This is a Japanese movie from 1963 called An Actor's Revenge, directed by Kan Ichikawa.

This is one I've been looking forward to seeing for a long time and had never gotten around to it.

And I finally watched it and it's super fun.

It's set in

19th century Japan or maybe it's early 2000.

No, I think it's late 19th century Japan.

And the main character is an actor who specializes in female roles and always has kind of like a feminine kind of like carriage to him, carries himself as a woman most of the time.

But secretly, despite being an acclaimed actor, he is also on a mission of vengeance against the three men who ruined his father and drove his father and mother to insanity insanity and death.

And so he is now in the town where these three men are, and he's going to use all of his wiles and cunning in order to bring them to an end.

And there's also a bunch of different, there's a bunch of different thieves running around who all have different gimmicks and are very fun.

Hello, you have sold this movie so hard.

It's great.

And

it looks beautiful.

It's got it's this 60s color.

It's very non-naturalistic.

It's very kind of expressive.

And it's just, it's a super fun movie, but it also has a serious message about uh the emptiness of spending your life seeking vengeance against people.

So, that's an actor's revenge.

Uh, I really enjoyed it.

I highly recommend it.

Uh, well, that's been it.

Uh, another episode of the Flophouse, that is.

Uh, time to unroll that uh anchovy can and climb into it and put on our little uh acorn caps.

Yep,

we're also tiny.

Yeah, we use that, we use a dust bunny as a stuffy.

Yeah,

if you enjoy this podcast, why not check out uh maximumfun.org, where there's a ton of other great podcasts on our same network.

Thanks to them for supporting us.

Thanks to you for supporting us.

Thanks to our producer, Alex, for supporting us by editing the thing and making it sound good.

He goes by Howl Dotty on the internet.

Yeah.

But for the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington.

And I'm Elliot Kalen.

And we are the Flophouse.

And I'm Elliot Kalen.

And I'm Stuart Wellington.

I'm Dan McCoy.

Produced by Alex Smith.

On Maximum Fun, Oodles of Casts for Your Noodle.

Bye.

Let's fucking grip it and rip it, baby.

Grip that, and then also let's rip that.

Grip and rip.

But first, let me say to you: one,

two,

three.

We gripped it.

It was ripped.

Yep, those three numbers were gripped and ripped.

Let's kick some tires, light some fires.

Sure, I guess.

And

here we go.

It starts like this:

Maximum Fun.

A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows.

Supported directly by you.