The Garfield Movie is now playing in theaters. Amazingly, it is the first-ever theatrical animated feature starring the famous feline (well, unless you count the limited releases those weird French straight-to-DVD films got in some regions), which is insane when you consider that Garfield has been around for nearly 50 years.
Now, in case you didn’t know this about me (and it’s unlikely you didn’t, really, but I like to humor the uninitiated), I loved Garfield as a kid. He was my favorite character ever and Garfield and Friends was my favorite show. So I often imagined what a Garfield movie would be like if it ever happened, and spent countless hours coming up with ideas for one. Now, I was young, so I thought I could go to 20th Century Fox or whatever and make my pitch to them and they just might actually listen. Anyway, here are many (but not quite all) of the ingenious things I came up with for my would-be Garfield film…
- An opening scene in which Garfield dresses up as Elvis and sings a song about how this is The Garfield Movie. You might think this is out there, but Garfield did dress up as Elvis once on Garfield and Friends in order to woo his girlfriend Penelope (and yes, I am the Garfield fan who prefers Penelope over Arlene). I can still sort of sing the song I came up with to myself, but don’t really remember any of the lyrics other than “This is The Garfield Movie!” Then again, the rest of what I had was most likely gibberish.
- Jon Arbuckle, at some point, accidentally drives his car onto a rollercoaster. He doesn’t realize he has done this until the big drop. Garfield gives him heck for doing this, naturally.
- Garfield and Odie get lost and must get back home. Funnily enough, this happens in the actual Garfield movie, except in that case they are kidnapped. Because I was a kid with original ideas, they got lost in New York City. By the way, I must divert here to point out to you that the title of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York was a total lie, as Kevin was never, in fact, home alone in that film.
- While lost in the city, Garfield and Odie meet two strays, a cat named Rotundo and a dog named Wag (I was good at coming up with names!). Rotundo fancied himself a film critic when in reality he just snuck into movie theaters to eat popcorn off the floor. Also, I wanted for Cheech Marin to voice Wag!
- Now here’s where the ideas get more….well, like ideas a child would have. Which I guess makes sense, since I was, you know, a child. Anyway, Rotundo and Wag, in my envisioned masterpiece, would have a big musical number about how stupid they thought each other were. The instrumentals would be…um, it was going to be to the tune of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” specifically by Mannheim Steamroller. If you’ve never heard that, trust me, it’s fucking epic. You know what’s weird? I can still sort of sing the song I came up with for that, and imagine Garfield and Odie dancing around. Huh.
- Okay, now we get to the batshit insanity. The stuff that sounds epic to you when you’re a kid and then realize how fucking stupid it would be if you had actually gotten to make it. Garfield and Odie would be pursued by an evil dogcatcher. The dogcatcher was absolutely obsessed with finding them (I think because they had embarrassed him? Maybe?). He lived in an evil lair by a swamp, as dogcatchers do, and sang a big villain’s song that was like a 50s doo-wop number. Like he would be backed up by frogs who went “bom-ba-da-da!” and poodles wearing poodle skirts (get it??? I was hilarious!) who would do the chorus. Wait, why would a dogcatcher have dogs working for him? Also, Gnorm Gnat, Jim Davis’s long-forgotten comic strip character, would make a cameo here and get immediately squished.
- Garfield…um…goes to the ocean where he meets his long-lost twin brother. At least I think it was his twin brother. It might have just been a lookalike. Either way, he was British for some reason. I think he sang a song similar to “Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid, except it was about how much he loved eating seafood. I dunno. Sometimes kids have ideas that make no sense.
- Garfield…um…goes to London where he meets his long-lost twin brother. At least I think it was his twin brother. It might have just been a lookalike. Either way, he was British for some reason. I think it was similar to The Prince and the Pauper, except that Billy Connolly was like a bad guy who wanted to become king or something. I dunno. Sometimes kids have ideas that make no sense.
- During the climax, the evil dogcatcher turns into a gigantic dinosaur. I don’t know how he did this, but he wanted to eat Garfield. I had multiple demises in mind for this evil dogcatcher-turned-dinosaur. One was him falling off a cliff and into the sea. Another far more brutal one involved the dinosaur trapping Garfield in his jaws, but then Garfield started tearing the dinosaur’s teeth out. The dinosaur then swallowed Garfield and then Garfield killed him by stabbing him as he went down his throat. What??? How did I come up with that?? I couldn’t even watch “violent” shows like Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles growing up!
- Jon and the gang think Garfield is dead. They think that the dogcatcher-turned-dinosaur has destroyed him. But Garfield turns out to be okay! Jon takes Rotundo, Wag, and Garfield’s British twin/lookalike home to live with them.
So those are (some of) the ideas I had for a Garfield movie as a kid. By the way, just so you all know, I have taken the time to legally copyright all of them. So don’t you dare infringe on them and try to make your own Garfield movie! I would hate to have to sue you. Have a good night! (And seriously, don’t violate my totally real copyrights!)