Nerd is the word!

Garfield was quite the big thing as I grew up in the 1980s. The daily newspaper comic strip by Jim Davis, starring the always-hungry and always-sarcastic fat cat was popular with my classmates, appearing in all sorts of licensed material from posters to books collecting the daily comics.

A regularly appearing cartoon show was inevitable. Garfield and Friends, which ran for a number of years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was the most successful of these animated productions. Even though there's quite a few volumes of Garfield and Friends season sets on DVD, Warner Brothers has decided to release several single-disc compilations. Garfield and Friends: A Cat and His Nerd is the most recent compilation disc, this one with a focus on Jon, Garfield's owner.

Garfield and Friends looks like a traditional television animated show from its time period. It's efficiently if rather simply animated; the colors are bright and the backgrounds have a nice watercolor texture. The back cover art is a little deceptive for consumers unfamiliar with the show. It lists 3 episode titles - all with the name "Jon" somewhere in the title. However, there are actually 15 episodes on this disc. Each episode runs roughly 8 minutes and includes the same intro and closing credits {although Garfield has a different line at the end of the title sequence in each episode}.

The episodes contained on this disc are: Wedding Bell Blues, Jukebox Jon, The Great Inventor, Jumping Jon, Supersonic Seymour, Jon the Barbarian, Jailbird Jon, Rolling Romance, Sit on It, Model Behavior, Garfield Goes Hawaiian, The Black Book, Twice Told Tale, D.J. Jon, and Dream Date.

The cartoons are clearly made for children, but adults who are fans of animation will find themselves chuckling from time to time. The show isn't laugh-a-minute, but it's passingly amusing. My favorites were the shorts that took Jon, Garfield, and Odie out of contemporary times and placed them in previous eras. Jon the Barbarian, for instance, has Garfield coaching Jon the Cartoonist to become Jon the Barbarian in order to win the favor of a barmaid from a brutish barbarian. The best episode on the disc, The Great Inventor, has an opening sequence that follows "Garfields" back in time owned by famous inventors Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Benjamin Franklin before starting its narrative in the Year 11 ½ AD and a Garfield named Cicero owned by a Roman Jon who invents lasagna.

Fans of this series would do better to seek out the season sets Warner Brothers have already released. Otherwise, Garfield and Friends: A Cat and His Nerd is a good primer on the show. Considering there's no extras, a "rent it" is the recommendation I'll go with, unless there's a young child in the household likely to be a big Garfield fan.

The DVD

Video:

I was a little disappointed with the image quality on this DVD. The episode intros, in particular, seem blurred. Other defects throughout include grain and aliasing. If you're getting this disc for little kids, they won't care, of course, but adults accustomed to modern animation on DVD will notice the visual imperfections and may find them distracting.

The cartoons are presented full frame 1.31:1 representative of their original television broadcasts.

Sound:

Two audio tracks exist on this disc: English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono and Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono. Both audio tracks sound pretty good, if obviously limited by the Mono presentation.

Subtitles are also available in English and Spanish.

Extras:

When the disc is played, a trailer automatically precedes the main menu for Garfield Gets Real. There's no link for it on the main menu itself.

And that is it for extras - This is most definitely a "bare bones" release.

Final Thoughts:

Light and diverting, these short cartoons of Garfield and Friends focusing on the Jon character offer a modestly entertaining animated take on the classic comic strip character. It's hard to know who the audience for these compilation discs is, however. If you're a big fan of Garfield and Friends, I'd recommend getting the season volume sets instead of this and other compilations. If you're interested in just getting a taste of the cartoon - and you're a big fan of the Jon Arbuckle character - then by all means, take a look. Rent it.

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