The most obvious thing to say about this trailer for The Garfield Movie is that it sucks — it sucks a lot — that Chris Pratt is voicing yet another cartoon character for which he is not suited. But you know what? We’re gonna take it in stride and instead write about how much we loved Lorenzo Music.
For a certain portion of millennials and extremely late Gen-Xers, Music was the voice actor who straight-up made this character come alive on the afternoon cartoon Garfield and Friends, which is basically the ideal form of a Garfield show — three seven-minute cartoons, two about the cat and Jon and Odie, and one about the assorted gang of weird-ass farm animals that lived out on the Arbuckle farm. He was also the voice of Venkman on The Real Ghostbusters, which made it all the funnier when Bill Murray was hired to take on the role of the Mondays-hating cat for his live-action film debut.
Take it from Jim Davis himself: During the auditioning process for the first Garfield special, Davis “looked at the room full of actors, and then in the corner, I saw Lorenzo, quietly licking himself.” The dude had an amazing career, from writing on shows like The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, to co-creating The Bob Newhart Show and Rhoda. He passed away in 2001, and since then, Garfield’s never really quite sounded right.
That trend continued when Sony dropped the preview earlier on Monday. We don’t think Garfield would like that, either. Peep it:
Here’s a synopsis, which establishes, in-depth, Garfield’s parentage:
“Garfield (voiced by Chris Pratt), the world-famous, Monday-hating, lasagna-loving indoor cat, is about to have a wild outdoor adventure! After an unexpected reunion with his long-lost father – scruffy street cat Vic (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson) – Garfield and his canine friend Odie are forced from their perfectly pampered life into joining Vic in a hilarious, high-stakes heist.”
The Garfield Movie hits theaters on May 24. As the trailer points out, if you have a cute-ass cat (or dog), you can submit a video of your fuzzy little dude and potentially get them featured in the film’s advertising campaign. Our submission would probably look something like this: