Garfield's Babes and Bullets

Garfield finds a trench coat and derby in the closet and decides to imagine himself as Sam Spayed an old school detective.

The fantasy is all in black and white like a common mystery movie. Sam Spayed is meet-ed by a woman who said her husband's been murder in a car accident and knows there's more to the story than meets the eye.

Sam Spayed(Garfield) gets to the bottom of this by tracing clues and asking suspects on this mystery matter.

As soon as he gathers up the clues, the mystery becomes clearer to him like the scent of coffee he's always having through out the story.

With great animation and some jokes and Odie & Jon Arbuckle making small cameos, Babes and Bullets is a fine Garifeld TV movie. And one of the few fantasies TV movies on Garfield.

I remember seeing this Garfield special when I was all of nine years old, I have loved it ever since.

Garfield has been to Hollywood and rescued Odie from the dog pound...but now we get to see him a'la Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, PI, a wise-cracking feline investigator hot on the tail of a murderer.

The show itself is in the traditional black and white, except for a few brief moments in the beginning and end. Sam Spade has been hired by a beautiful human, Tonya O'Tabby (get the name?) to find the person responsible for the death of her 23 year-old husband. Spade questions several suspects- the husband's university boss, Professor O'Felix (another cat reference) and his own girl Friday, the lovely Kitty. Garfield, sporting the usual hat and trench coat, might just be able to solve this mystery if he can keep John at bay and Tonya O'Tabby in check. Who really is responsible for this outrageous "who dunnit"?

This is a unique Garfield show that I found a little scary when I was a kid since it was darker and less comedic, but I loved it anyway. The amazing Lorenzo Music reprises his role as Garfield. Highly recommended.

Garfield is bored out of his mind. With nothing do to he rummages in the closet and unearths an old raincoat and fedora hat. All of a sudden he has the desire to fantasise himself as a jaded dime-novel private detective called Sam Spayed.

At this point the show turns to black and white, a bold move considering most studios only want to give kids garish loud colors. Sam Spayed is the typical 1940's private dick. He narrates with the usual cynicism and attention to obscure detail. Women and dames or broads and every scam or crime is the 'oldest trick in the book'.

A beautiful broad called Tanya enters his office asking for help. Her husband drove his car off a cliff and the police are only too eager to assume he fell asleep at the wheel. Smelling foul play she hires Spayed to find the truth. And through a series of odd clues Sam finally deduces the whos, whys and whens.

A radically different turn for Garfield sure, but still very funny, with some great dialogue and one-liners. Phil Roman directs as if he's doing a black and white dime novel story and not the usual Garfield stuff (as great as the usual is). As thin as the story may sound it actually comes across as quite clever and it is surely one of the best Garfield TV specials. And they are all great so that's pretty much saying a lot.

Excellent classic detective parody, as Garfield slips into the role after finding an old trench coat and fedora. Film noir's appeal for me is definitely in the story, and the writing has this in "Spayeds". Punchy one-liners abound, the humour brings everything from a smile to a chuckle in rapid fire. The mystery goes from having nothing to unclicking slowly like an old bank vault safe at just the right pace. Voice acting is identifiably Garfield, while the animation steps up to more sophisticated visual elements to bring enjoyment to all ages. Bookend the tale with some jazzy music, this is amoung the very best of Garfield.

Garfield is having a very boring day. So, just for the hell of it, he wanders into a closet where he finds a fedora and a trench coat. This inspires him to drift into fantasy land, imagining himself as private detective "Sam Spayed". He's hired by the sultry Tanya O'Tabby (voice of Desiree Goyette) to probe the mysterious death of her husband, a handsome young college professor. Sam works the clues while enjoying the coffee made by devoted secretary Kitty (voice of Julie Payne).

An obsession with coffee is a running gag in this endearing, likeable Garfield adventure. Smartly written by Garfield creator Jim Davis (based on a story by Ron Tuthill), it's savvy enough to pay respectful tribute to the entire film noir / private eye genre, while also lightly parodying it. To that end, the special is mostly shot in black & white. While Garfield-as-Sam-Spayed has a typical good sense of humour, he does take his job seriously, and he is determined to have a motive and a suspect before too much time has passed.

Odie appears briefly, as a "man from maintenance", but he has a hysterical reaction to a flood of tears from one of the women. Jon only turns up at the end, to help set up the final gag. But the audience won't mind that much, as this is a good, entertaining story with some funny lines, and it's an inspired idea to have Garfield adopt a different sort of persona. Lorenzo Music is a delight as always as the voice of our heroic feline, with both Gregg Berger (voice of Odie) and Thom Huge (voice of Jon) getting to do double duty by also voicing the coroner and a thug, respectively.

The design of the supporting characters is right on the money; they all look like perfect animated representations of the kinds of characters we see in countless live-action versions of such material.

Solid entertainment in general.

Seven out of 10.