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| Jon knows how to keep the flame of love alive. |
In recent years, Jim Davis' comic strip Garfield has relented somewhat in its depiction of the character Jon Arbuckle as a friendless, antisocial dweeb by giving him a seemingly-normal girlfriend named Liz, a veterinarian. That convention was taken over to the Garfield movies as well, with Jennifer Love Hewitt playing Liz to Breckin Meyer's Jon. This, to me, feels like a cheat, akin to the "bland nice guy" makeover former hothead David Seville got when the Chipmunks franchise was revived in the 1980s. This, too, was carted over to the live-action Chipmunks movies. So Dave is no longer a truly-scary rageaholic, and Jon doesn't necessarily spend his Saturday nights alone with his cat. Well, I say phooey to all this focus-group, audience-placating nonsense. I'm making these characters off-putting again, and I'm starting with Jon. So there!