Garfield (2004)

Garfield: The Movie, released in the summer of 2004, presents itself to the classifier as a specimen of unusual purity. A CGI orange cat, voiced by Bill Murray in a register somewhere between resignation and a nap, torments his owner, covets lasagna, and learns to tolerate a dog. The human cast, led by Breckin Meyer and Jennifer Love Hewitt, performs the sort of mild romantic comedy business that studios once manufactured without a second thought. Nothing here is argued. Nothing is proposed. The film simply exists, like a casserole left on a counter.

We search the runtime for the markers of contemporary social consciousness and find the shelves bare. The minority performers in the supporting cast occupy their roles without the screenplay acknowledging them, which is to say they are characters and not statements. The veterinarian, a woman, exists to be romanced and to deliver exposition about pets. Garfield's weight is the engine of a running gag, and the gag is not kind. The antagonist, a vain television host, is punished for his vanity and his theft, not for his wealth. There is no economic critique, no environmental sermon, no historical revisionism, no interior life examined for its neurotype. The film wants only to show a cat engineering a series of comic complications involving a dog.

This is a vintage from before the cultural turn, and it tastes of nothing but sugar and 2004. It is not a failure of awareness. It is an absence of the category entirely. We file it accordingly, with the quiet respect owed to a film that has no opinions whatsoever.