Hi Ho
I would like to way in on some of the comments here. First of I am not objective, I am a Huge Garfield follower, have toured Paws Inc and have meet Jim Davis (and his parents for that mater) twice. So If I sound one sided its only because I am.
“man... I'm totally disappointed in Jim Davis. When I was little, he was my hero, and Garfield was one of my inspirations to be a cartoonist. Now, he makes this movie, and he quit the comics a while back (just signs the boxes) and I really feel betrayed by him. I do still like Garfield, but more of the older stuff.”
That’s not what I saw when I toured the studios last year, and I haven’t heard of it changing. True Jim does not draw very line of the comic you see in the paper. He comes up with the gag, makes a rough sketch of it and then it gets handed off to the Paws artists they draw a final version, once it is Ok’ed by Jim, he signs it and it gets shipped to the papers. There is a great explanation of this on a TV special that aired on CBS celebrating Garfield’s 10 birthday, He turned 25 last year (I got a piece of the birthday cake in fact). It is my understand that all the Garfield comic strips since at least 1983 have been made that way.
“Once again, there already WAS a Garfield movie, an animated feature in the 80's, which didn't do well at the box office (I gather... I've never heard of it past the conceptual stages). “
I respectfully dispute this statement. TV shows Yes Feature film, No. This summers GCI movie will be the fat cats first trip to the box office.
I whole heartily agree with the following statement…
“The only good that can come out of this is seeing Garfield specials, etc, finally come out on DVD.... been wanting to see Babes and Bullets.…”
I am trying to remain open minded about the movie but I wish they could have just given a 2 hr cartoon or mixed 2d and real live like Looney Tunes Back In action did. But this June a DVD with 3 Garfield specials comes out and the first season set of the Garfield and Friends series comes out in June.