Garfield in the Rough

Title card.

Garfield in the Rough is the third Garfield television special first broadcast on CBS on 1984-10-26 and later released on home video and converted into a book and a read-a-long book. As with previous and later Garfield films, the soundtrack was composed by Ed Bogas and Desirée Goyette.

In the film, Garfield, Jon, and Odie are bored with their lives so they decide to go camping only to encounter a panther which has escaped from the local zoo.

Personal

I don't remember exactly when I first watched this film, but I'm pretty confident it was the first Garfield special I saw and my family also had the book version around 1985. Although it's not my favorite Garfield special, it is the one that I have the earliest memories of and the one that helped cement my love of Garfield for year to come.

I own the film on DVD in the Garfield Travel Adventures compilation.

Cast

Actor	Character
Lorenzo Music	Garfield
Thom Huge	Jon Arbuckle
Gregg Berger	Odie, Tall ranger, radio announcer
George Wendt	Short ranger
Hal Smith	Dicky Beaver
Orson Bean	Billy Rabbit
Desirée Goyette	Girl cats
Lou Rawls	Title song vocals

Review

Good

The black and white gimmick is a great way to start.
Garfield losing his clothes when he realizes he's not going somewhere fancy, but just going camping is hilarious.
The film has a lot of tense moments and, as a kid, I was pretty scared. The burned up ranger's note, the eyes of the panther, the "Run-Run I'm Afraid" song.
The love the characters Billy and Dickey.

Bad

The backgrounds are pretty awful.
A fair amount of the animation is pretty choppy, some of the drawing doesn't fit with the series, and early pencil lines are frequently visible.
Although the film has all new music, none of it is very memorable.