Garfield and Friends - Volume One
Picture: C
Sound: C Extras: D Episodes: B+
Is it possible that our childhood memories are not quite
as great as we like to think? Or is it
just that as time marches on we are not nearly as impressed with the things we
once were? Whatever the case may be,
certain memories when rehashed become interesting observations of what your
life once was, which was my recent experience upon revisiting Garfield. When I say Garfield I am not talking about
that poor excuse for a live-action film that was released early in 2004, but
that seems to be the pivotal point in this recent Garfield craze (or
cycle). Elsewhere on this site I
reviewed Garfield as Himself, which
is linked here at:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/showreview.php/1306
I was truly upset with some of the ways that the
live-action version of Garfield completely abandoned the characteristics that
made Garfield the cat that he is and was.
Upon watching Garfield and
Friends Season One I became more aware of even more liberties that were
taken, and to take that even further I went into my comic collection of
Garfield books and was suddenly drifting back to my yesteryears. I became aware once again what the draw was
initially to this fat cat. Garfield
hates Mondays, loves lasagna, hates needles, is annoyed by Odie, punches alarm
clocks, causes his owner Jon grief, and most of all complains about how tough
his life is…who could hate this character?
Garfield
and Friends - Volume One (Season One) began in 1988 and the entire show ran
until 1994. Although this was the first
season there were many episodes than ran prior that were TV shorts, which were
based off certain comic book segments.
This entire season box set is broken down into three discs, which
contain all 24 episodes and each episode follows the typical formula, which is
one Garfield segment followed by the U.S. Acres (AKA Garfield’s friends) and
then another Garfield segment.
From a technical standpoint these DVD’s are fairly
average, but also take into consideration the fact that Garfield never exactly
looked like a fantastic production to begin with. Rather Garfield kept with the basics and essentially just created
a live version of the comic without going overboard. The colors on this DVD are very animated looking with flat hard
colors, which tend to bleed, but this is most likely more an artistic flaw than
a DVD problem. Garfield was never meant
to be a highly polished series and relies more on the content rather than the
quality. The episodes keep with their
original 1.33 X 1 standard TV aspect ratio and the audio is presented in Dolby
Digital Mono. The sound certainly
suffers the most as it sounds really compressed and there appears to be a lot
of ‘noise’ on the soundtrack as well.
Garfield once dominated Saturday morning cartoons and now
you can enjoy those and cherish them on DVD. While the quality might be a bit
lacking, which is partially a DVD problem (especially for sound) and just a
general problem with the picture it is fair to say that just having these is
well worth it. If nothing else its
better to own this just to cleanse yourself if you had the nerves to try and
watch the live action film.
- Nate Goss
