Not the greatest movie in the world. I game it 3 out of 5 because watching the movie is almost like watching mulitple episodes of the show. It's like watching a clip episode. I think that kids of today would love this show, but I'd pick up a TV season of the show rather than this movie. That way the can experience the Cadillac cats too.

Having been a big fan of the Heathcliff comic strip back when I was but a wee `Norch, I figured it was my duty as a fan of the original fat tabby troublemaker to tune into the weekdaily afternoon `toon show that played on the local independent station (yes, children, there WAS a time when there used to be non-network-affiliate TV stations) way back when. While I found the show appropriately silly for the audience it played to, it didn't fully capture the look and spirit of the daily strip. Take for example `Cliff's human buddy Iggy, who went from a baseball-capped blond kid in normal street clothes in the strip to a bare-headed brunette young'un in a somewhat nerdy get-up in the cartoon show. A few of the other supporting characters were also given significant redesigns, but not quite to the extent of what they did to Iggy. Then there's the near-sighted, propeller-beanie-wearing Willie... who was nowhere to be seen in the show (alhough his name was brought up a couple times). And while our hero's feline girlfriend Sonja popped up from time to time to join in the fun, the appropriately-monikered `Crazy' Shirley never even got a cameo. And don't get me started on the addition of the three Catillac Cats from the `Cats `n' Company' side of the show...

Anyhoo, I'd pretty much seen every Heathcliff `toon at least twice by the time I heard that this movie was playin' at the local multiplex. Naturally I wanted to check it out, and harangued the `rents about it for three days straight until they finally caved. It started off okay, with the main man-- er, cat recounting his greatest adventures to his visiting nephews. Ya know, sorta like Donald Duck talkin' to Huey, Duey, and Louie... only without the speech impediment. Only thing was, every single "adventure" in the film had already been played on the TV show! Except for the "Heathcliff-and-his-nephews" frame around each vignette, there was not an inkle of original material here! The flick was a freakin' "best-of" clip show! Needless to say, I was ticked! I was hopin' to catch something new, and ended up wasting four hard-earned allowance dollars on `toons I'd already seen on the small screen for free! For that kinda dough I coulda' added three new Heathcliff comic-strip paperbacks to my collection via my middle school's Scholastic book-ordering club!

Sadly, I mark my unfortunate experience with this movie as the moment when this beloved tabby "jumped the shark" with me. A few years after my unfortunate experience, my interest in Heathcliff was pretty much kaput. I got rid of my extensive collection of comic-strip paperbacks, and got on with my life. It was a tough thing to do, but it hadda be done...

`Late