Lasagna is not healthy. You can hear the sound of hundreds of meat tenderizers slapping the palms of some angry Italian hands right now, but it’s true. Even a cat like Garfield, who adores lasagna, is acutely aware of this. But much like pulling the blanket back over his head after his Monday morning alarm goes off, chowing down on lasagna is one thing that the plump orange tabby is reluctant to give up. I’m not a veterinarian (too sad), but all that saturated fat can’t be good for him!

Perhaps that’s why, in The Garfield Movie, Garfield is trying to cut back on his cholesterol and fats. Yet, it’s hammered over the viewers’ heads from the opening scene that this stout little guy still loves his baked pasta, so much so that he can’t stop maxing out his owner Jon Arbuckle’s credit card to place delivery orders. That’s why, when Garfield saddles up next to a big bag of cheddar-flavored Popchips—a “healthier choice” snack that, here, is computer-animated with truly disturbing photorealism—everything we know and love about Garfield is thrown out of whack.

This glaring example of brand sponsorship is just one of many in The Garfield Movie, plunked into one of this lazy feline’s most generic outings yet. It’s almost as if the producers and Sony Pictures, the distributor behind the film, hoped these disappointing cash grabs might somehow ground the movie’s story more firmly in our reality. In a way, that’s true: Our existence is more inundated with........

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