Follow TV Tropes

Reviews Film / A Talking Cat

Go To

BonsaiForest Since: Jan, 2001
04/06/2014 11:17:46 •••

What happens when a gay porn director makes a family movie?

David DeCoteau is one prolific director, pumping out tons of movies in a single year. His library may not be nearly as big as that of Godfrey Ho, but DeCoteau has over 100 films to his name, and judging from their trailers, they all have been filmed in the same locations, and many recycle the same actors.

Here, we get a cat who wanders into the houses of two families and is quickly semi-adopted by both of them. He snarks all the time in internal monologue. Sometimes he talks directly to humans. This is acheived by having his voice sound completely identical to his internal monologue, meaning that the only way you can tell that he's talking instead of thinking is by seeing his badly photostopped black dot of a mouth increase and decrease in size perfectly out of sync with his actual speech.

Duffy the cat sounds a cross between bored and cocky, which actually seems to me to be the perfect voice for Garfield as I imagine him. I never liked Lorenzo Music as the voice of Garfield, as he could barely emote and sounded like he was always about to fall asleep. Eric Roberts, even if unintentionally, sounds bored but snarky. However, he sounds this way even during the few moments when he shouldn't, such as when he delivers exposition about his magic collar. Maybe the actor really was phoning it in, and just happened to define the character perfectly.

Being a director of gay porn, DeCoteau decided to hire Ambiguously Gay actors to play the male teens, and give them a Shirtless Scene where one teaches the other how to swim in a pool. A little gratuitous and self-serving, but still clean. What's questionable, though, is the shirt worn by the main father character, which translates into "One day at a fucking time" in Spanish. Good thing there aren't any Americans who can read Spanish.

The movie attempts to ramp up the drama with a fake as hell near-death. Poor Duffy is hit by a car, and has to wear toilet paper - I mean, "bandages", to cover his horrific nonexistent wounds. You can tell he's in such pain by the way he cheerfully flaps his tail and rolls around.

The whole thing is just great ineptitude, but not on The Room scale - for one, the actors can actually act. I'd have gone into detail about the dumb dialog and cheesy humor, but I've said enough already.

Tomodachi Since: Aug, 2012
03/20/2014 00:00:00

The males are ambigously gay? I thought the characters were already gay!

To win, you need to adapt, and to adapt, you need to be able to laugh away all the restraints. Everything holding you back.
Tomodachi Since: Aug, 2012
03/20/2014 00:00:00

male actors*

To win, you need to adapt, and to adapt, you need to be able to laugh away all the restraints. Everything holding you back.
Heliosphoros Since: Sep, 2013
03/24/2014 00:00:00

Because LGBT characters are totally anti-kid friendly [/saarcam, people like you make me sick]

Heliosphoros Since: Sep, 2013
BonsaiForest Since: Jan, 2001
03/24/2014 00:00:00

Nothing is wrong with gay characters, and even Archie Comics, which is one of the most saccharine and G-rated things in existence, has one.

I'm simply saying that the director of this movie had previously made softcore gay porn, and now that he makes family movies too, he not only isn't good at it but finds an excuse to have shirtless guys (one of whom is portrayed as having a crush on a girl) in a swimming pool.

BonsaiForest Since: Jan, 2001
04/06/2014 00:00:00

Also, I rewrote that part of the review to make more sense, and make it clear that I wasn't saying anything negative about gays.


Leave a Comment:

Top