Who was it that somewhere along the line got the brilliant idea of turning the popular syndicated comic-strip, Garfield, into a live-action film featuring a computer animated, wise-cracking cat? I have no idea, but apparently one just wasn’t enough. I know that people love Garfield for some odd reason, but personally I can’t handle the recycled jokes of the series that seem to make it into at lest one often strips weekly. Hey, remember that one where Jon leaves his lasagna sitting out and then after Garfield helps by “keeping a eye on it” we see him return a couple panels later to an empty plate and then he yells Garfield’s name. Oh, that’s pretty much the scenario see every week. See my point?

Well, Garfield is back again in the follow up to the original movie, and A Tail of Two Kitties (yes, how cleaver) features twice the Garfield and twice the annoyance. Jon (Breckin Meyer) has decided that it’s high time to ask his long-time girlfriend Liz (Jennifer Love Hewitt) to marry him, but before he can, Liz announces that she needs to make an important trip to the United Kingdom. That’s not going to stand in his way though, and Jon heads off to the UK right behind her, but not before booking some boarding for Garfield and Odie . . . . but as you might have guessed, Garfield (and pal) sneak themselves along.

In the UK however, a wealthy widow has passed on and left her vast fortune and estate to her pet cat Prince, who looks just like Garfield. The cat’s nine lives might be up however when a surviving family member, Dargis (Billy Connolly) decides to try and get rid of the cat, and Garfield soon finds himself living in luxury when the royal subjects mistake him for Prince while elsewhere, the wealthy feline fills in for Garfield and has to live the life of a commoner.

The target audience here is for a younger crowd, and while there are some children’s films that are done quite well and are surprisingly entertaining, this does not happen to be one of them. The computer animated talking animal shtick is getting old quite frankly, and A Tail of Two Kitties does nothing to help that sub-genre of film, but it’s more than just a tired premise that drags this movie down, it’s essentially everything else. The film is far too predictable and all the characters, human and animal, are as two-dimensional as their comic counterparts, and that goes for those that were created specifically for the film.

Just how many times can you recycle jokes about Odie’s stupidity, Garfield’s love of lasagna or his hatred of Monday’s? Apparently plenty, and if you can’t get enough of the overdone, overused comedy from the weekly strip, there is plenty more featured in the film. Of course, we can’t just have Garfield and Prince as the only talking animals, and the film features the subjects of his Highness, who also happen to be talking animals as well done, not in full computer animation like the cats, but the talking animal gimmick that the remakes of Dr. Dolittle made so popular (though I’d point the finger at a few television commercials prior to this, or any other film that falls into the same category.)

Is there any redemption in the film aside from occasionally getting the chance to see Jennifer Love Hewitt in a few low cut outfits? Not really? I’m still trying to wrap my head around how some of the cast was even convinced to sign on, and seeing Lucy Davis (who I know quite well from my repeated viewings of Shaun of the Dead) in the film was rather disappointing. A Tail of Two Kitties feels that it is sufficient to assault you with comedy that just isn’t funny, rehashes of the same jokes, a great deal of badly done computer animation (the cats really do look terrible) and some pop culture references that the target audience just isn’t going to get. I don’t know many children that have seen Oliver Twist and would get the brief (and bland) joke seen in the film, and fewer still that would probably recognize the reworking of The Jefferson’s theme song.

It could most certainly get worse, and it in fact does. The DVD release doesn’t just provide you with the original theatrical release of the film, but there is also an extended version that contains scenes that were too hot for the theater. Okay, maybe not, but honestly, is this the type of film that is going to get censored so heavily that you need to release two versions? I think not. Even some of the “director’s cut” horror titles that have been hitting the market recently offer some scenes that I can’t help but wonder why it was cut in the first place, and in the case of A Tale of Two Kitties, this seems to be nothing more than marketing at it’s finest. Besides, you know that if you have little ones that loved the movie in the theaters, they don’t care if there are extra scenes or not; they’re going to wear the DVD player and the disc out by watching it over and over again.

There is more fun for younger Garfield fans, and if they’ve wanted to learn how to draw the popular characters, Jim Davis takes some time to teach you how to draw Garfield, Odie, and even Pooky. The DVD also comes with an exclusive comic strip, but there are some games as well. Odie’s Photo Album game s just a mix and match where you need to figure out what photo is being shown as it blurs into picture while Garfield’s Maze Game has you navigating the overweight cat through a maze in hopes of finding, you guessed it, lasagna.

Hollywood just can’t get enough to transforming comic strips into films, and Garfield is just the latest that will go onto a list of other atrocities such as Popeye, Dennis the Menace, and Dick Tracy. I suppose next up we can expect to see a live action Peanuts, maybe a computer animated Mother Goose and Grim, or perhaps another film that could be similar to Garfield with live actors interacting with computer animated characters; Calvin and Hobbes. A Tail of Two Kitties is Garfield at his worst, though I don’t really think that there’s a best, and this is a “tail” that’s better left untold.

-mike-