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.
