IMDb rating: 7.9/10
I got a couple of things wrong about this in my offhand less-than-one-sentence reference to it at the end of my review of Dutch. I said it featured "old Garfield and Doc Boy", but Jon Arbuckle's brother Doc Boy does not appear in it. I must have been thinking of the Garfield Christmas episode. I also implied that it was made in 1991, but it was 1989.
In my defense, I can't ever remember seeing this before, even though I was an avid fan of the Garfield and Friends cartoon, which I recommend. Garfield's Thanksgiving is not really a movie. It's what people commonly call a "TV special", but usually that means a feature-length (or close to feature-length) production. In this case it's just a half-hour episode of Garfield and Friends, but it's devoted to a single story rather than being broken up into smaller segments.
I'm describing this at length because there's not a lot to say about Garfield's Thanksgiving adventure. The plot is that Garfield has to go to the vet's office the day before Thanksgiving, and she puts him on a diet. Meanwhile, Jon is engaged in shockingly desperate and self-destructive behavior to get the veterinarian, Dr. Liz Wilson, to go on a date with him. He gets her to come over for Thanksgiving dinner by holding his breath until she agrees—which is what a three-year-old would do. I know Jon Arbuckle is not noted as a ladies' man, but this is profoundly pathological behavior.
Are we supposed to believe that Liz Wilson had no plans for Thanksgiving? Or did she have to call her family and explain why she couldn't visit them this year because a pathetic manchild who talks to his cat held himself hostage until she promised to eat dinner with him?
Garfield's diet occupies about three minutes of plot time. Liz insists that Garfield cut down on carbohydrates and fat, so Jon feeds him half a lettuce leaf for lunch. That seems pretty inadequate, especially since cats are carnivorous. Anyway, as soon as Liz shows up at the house, she decides to cut Garfield some slack on the diet, and that's the resolution of that.
Meanwhile, Jon reveals that he somehow has no idea how to prepare a meal, even though he's a bachelor and presumably manages to feed himself on a regular basis. Well, I guess it doesn't take Wolfgang Puck to whip up the gigantic, plate-sized, completely raw steaks he usually eats:
So he botches the job by leaving the turkey frozen solid until Thanksgiving morning, and then he puts a bunch of raw, uncut vegetables into a pot and pours water on them and thinks that will be edible. Finally Garfield convinces him to call his grandmother in to save the day. I appreciate that they actually thought through the question of how anyone could possibly salvage a frozen turkey, which grandma does by slicing it into slabs with a chainsaw and then deep-frying. (Wouldn't there be pieces of bones in all the slices? Oh, who cares.)
While this is going on, Jon is distracting Liz by telling a series of boring stories about the history of Thanksgiving and how it compares to similar harvest-time festivals in other countries. I got the impression that Jon was just buying time so Liz wouldn't realize that he had called his elderly grandmother to make dinner for him and his date even though he's a grown man with a house and a job. But, if this is just a distraction, why does Jon just happen to know all of these pointless facts? Is it possible that there's a hole in this plot? Maybe I should watch it again.
Whatever the case, the dinner turns out great, and Liz never finds out that Jon's grandma made it. She just walks into the dining room and sees that the table has been miraculously set and doesn't ask how it happened. Maybe she figures Odie did it. She's so pleased with the food that she promises to come back next Thanksgiving and kisses Jon on her way out the door.
He is so in there. Maybe this holding your breath until you pass out trick isn't so bad after all. I'll go practice.
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