Garfield's Feline Fantasies is the eleventh animated and twelfth total Garfield television special.
Synopsis[]
Garfield imagines that he's Lance Sterling, a droll soldier of fortune accompanied by his faithful associate Slobber Joe Odie on a Middle East mission. Their assignment is to recover the stolen Banana of Bombay, the source of the old banana peel sight gag and therefore the symbol of humor to nations around the world.
Plot[]
Garfield is dreaming about being a submarine captain with Pooky as his commanding officer. When Garfield's alarm clock wakes him up, Garfield continues the dream's storyline and fires a torpedo (smashes the alarm clock). Enjoying this, Garfield enters a cowboy fantasy when greeting Odie for the morning and a magician fantasy when waking up Jon to make them breakfast. Odie joins him in the latter fantasy.
Garfield tells Odie their fantasies are not dangerous as Jon is always there to bail them out. They test this theory by entering a fantasy where they are jet pilots of a plane with faulty engines. When Jon saves them from falling, they decide the theory is correct and climb into the refrigerator, entering another fantasy.
In the fantasy, Garfield is Lance Sterling, a James-Bond-meets-Indiana-Jones figure, and Odie is Slobberjob, his bodyguard. The two travel to a seemingly Asian city and meet a villain named Fat Guy and his bodyguard Rameet. It is revealed Lance Sterling and Slobberjob have been sent to find the Banana of Bombay, the first banana used in the banana-peel gag. However, it disappeared years ago, and the holy ankh which contained a map to find it was split in half. Fat Guy explains he wants to sell the Banana to whichever country pays the most for it. Lance Sterling insults Fat Guy before agreeing to unite his half of the holy ankh with Fat Guy's. However, Lane Sterling steals Fat Guy's half of the ankh before escaping with Slobberjob. When Fat Guy's henchmen pursue them, a woman named Nadia distracts the henchmen so the protagonists can escape. She claims Lance Sterling and Slobberjob's employers sent her to protect them, but Lance Sterling says they don't need the help and tells her to leave.
Lance Sterling and Slobberjob combine the holy ankh pieces with a supercomputer and discover the ankh's map does not point to the Banana of Bombay, but a clue to the Banana's true location. They travel to Paris, and meet Nadia again after a humorous misunderstanding with a French waiter. She tells them Fat Guy and Rameet are tracking them, and after Slobberjob attempts to take on Rameet, he is thrown at an awning and discovers a map to the Banana of Bombay.
Arriving in a jungle, Lance Sterling and Slobberjob enter a temple holding the Banana of Bombay. They discover the Banana on a pillar in the middle of a pool of lava, but it is taken by Nadia. She explains she is from Moldavia, which is a poor country, so the Moldavian government has decided to invest in tourism and they need the Banana to open a fruit stand. Fat Guy and Rameet take the banana and trap Lance Sterling, Nadia, and Slobberjob on the pillar. Rameet falls in the lava, and Slobberjob manages to get everyone off the pillar. A group of monkeys steal the Banana of Bombay from Fat Guy, but Lance Sterling and Slobberjob obtain the Banana and flee the temple, pursued by Fat Guy, Nadia, and the monkeys. They are cornered at a cliff. Slobberjob eats the Banana, much to Lance's surprise, with Lance remembering that they are in a fantasy. They use the peel to slip all their adversaries and make them fall into a river. Rameet, who survived falling into the lava, confronts them, and they are forced to jump off the cliff.
Ending the fantasy, Garfield and Odie fall out of the refrigerator. When Jon asks Garfield if he had another fantasy, Garfield states it was his last one, only to enter another fantasy that mirrors Casablanca.
Characters[]
Main characters[]
- Garfield/Lance Sterling
- Odie/Slobberjob
Major characters[]
Minor characters[]
- Jon Arbuckle
- Waiter (voiced by Gregg Berger)
- Monkeys
- Pooky
- Nuns
- Airplane passengers
- Bar men
- Fish
- Natives
- Weasel
Book Adaption[]
Unlike previous book adaptions of other TV specials which were made in comic format, the book adaption for Garfield's Feline Fantasies is written in a storybook perspective.
Differences between the special and the book adaption:
- The fantasy that is used to wake Jon in the book is reminiscent of Gulliver's Travels (with Jon as Gulliver and Garfield and Odie as Lilliputians), while the fantasy in the animated special is Garfield imagining himself as a stage magician
- The ninja fantasy Garfield envisions at breakfast is replaced with a water ballet fantasy in the bathroom.
- There is an additional fantasy included where Garfield has captured a bird in a birdbath and envisions an army of birds encircling him, likely a reference to Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds.
- In the main fantasy, an additional character named Z (similar to Q in the James Bond films) is introduced and shows Lance Sterling and Slobberjob a retrofitted car the two use to get to Paris. Afterwords, there is a car chase between Lance and Slobberjob vs Fat Guy and Rameet.
- When Lance and Slobberjob head into Africa, they encounter Nadia disguised as a tour guide. Upon arriving at the temple, the two contact their employers about Nadia and realize she is not part of their organization just as she disappeared.
- In the animated special, Lance wears a necktie and Slobberjob wears a hat and a spy outfit reminiscent of James Bond's foe Oddjob. In the book, Lance wears a bowtie (which evokes James Bond even more) and Slobberjob wears the same outfit as Lance.
- Nadia in the book is depicted as blonde while Nadia in the animated special is depicted as a redhead.
- In the book, the columns and lava are activated when Slobberjob accidentally hit a hidden panel on the floor. Because of this, an annoyed Lance orders Slobberjob to leap from column to column to retrieve the Banana of Bombay. In the animated special, the columns and lava are already in place, and Slobberjob leapt from column to column on his own volition, with a concerned Lance looking on.
- During the Lance Sterling sequence in the book, Jon is shown calling for Garfield and Odie, to tell them that he was going to the store. This sets up Lance calling for Jon for help (with no answer) and then Slobberjob deciding to use the banana peel.
Songs[]
- "Garfield's Comin' to Town" performed by Lorenzo Music.
- "As Time Goes By" performed by Desirée Goyette.
Trivia[]
- Moldavia was not yet an independent country at this time, and was a republic in the Soviet Union.
- This is the first television special with music by David Benoit and Desirée Goyette.
- This is the first television special animated at Wang Film Productions.
- This is the only CBS special with no songs by Lou Rawls.
- The fantasy in which Garfield envisions the goldfish as a shark is likely a reference to the film Jaws.
- The theme that plays when the refrigerator opens is Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra, which was used in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The book adaptation has a nod to this by mentioning that when the refrigerator opened, the "theme from 2001" began to play.
- Odie's persona Slobberjob is likely a reference to the James Bond villain Oddjob, as their names and looks have similarities. In addition, later in the animated special, Slobberjob uses his hat as a grappling hook, implying his hat may be as sharp as Oddjob's hat weapon.
Goofs[]
- While walking through a hallway, Garfield left whiskers are missing.
- When Fat Guy shows Lance his half of the ankh, the ankh has no lining at its bottom.
- When Lance pulls a waiter's face, the waiter's bow tie changes from black to gray.
- After arriving in the jungle, a few of Lance's walking animations are missing.
- When Fat Guy and Rameet are shown to be following Lance and Slobberjob, Fat Guy's monobrow is discolored.
- While sliding down a trap, The mouth below Lance's tongue is discolored pink.
- When closed captions are enabled, Rameet is sometimes called Raw Meat.