Starring: Bill Murray (voice), Breckin Meyer, Jennifer Love Hewitt

Cert: U

Garfield is a fat cat who has everything going his way. Until his owner, Jon (Meyer – Road Trip, Rat Race) adopts a dog, Odie, because he fancies the vet (Love Hewitt). Odie gets dog-napped and Garfield goes out to rescue him. Yep, that’s it.

Everyone probably knows something about the fat, egotistical, lasagne loving feline brought to life in newspaper comic strips. Even if it is just remembering all those gawd-awful soft toys that stuck to the inside of your car windows. His acerbic humour was perfect for a daily three frame joke in the Daily Mail but I wonder how many people bought the compilation books and managed to read the whole thing for 90 minutes non-stop. Not many, I’ll wager. But that is what you are asked to do here.

There is a modicum of presumption that you already know the basics (hates Mondays, eats lasagne, abuses everyone around him) so there is no backstory and the films entire premise is so unoriginal that the kiddies will have no problem keeping up with it.

But that’s not good enough anymore. Since Toy Story (perhaps earlier), children’s animated films have grown up so to supply the nippers with a story and characters they can grasp, the company with viable merchandising opportunities and the parents with a clever subtext to get them laughing and their children asking, “What’s funny, daddy?”

The roles of Meyer and Love Hewitt are relatively redundant and uninspiring; Garfield is odd looking enough and is very funny in his unflattering CGI fatness but looks even more out of place next to the real co-star animals. But why did they not CGI Odie?

The kids may find it engaging because Garfield isn’t off the screen for more than a few frames at a time and there are a few genuinely funny sequences that carry you through the quiet parts (a Garfield, Odie dance off is particularly amusing) but ultimately the film just doesn’t do anything.

Garfield 2? I doubt it but it wasn’t so bad that there could be hope for a better sequel. The worse thing that could come from this is a resurgence of those really funny window stickers.

Trivia: Bill Murray played Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters. The voice of Peter Venkman in the cartoon The Real Ghostbusters was by one Lorenzo Music who also supplied the vocal talents for Garfield in the cartoon series.