The Garfield Movie: Not hellish – but pretty purr-gatorial

Say what you will about Garfield, but the cat knows his strengths. Lazing around, eating lasagna, hating Mondays, tormenting his hapless owner Jon: the repertoire may be lean, but the 46-year career (and counting) suggests it’s also a winning one – though perhaps one best suited to three-panel comics and six-minute cartoons.

With an hour and 40 minutes of screen time to fill, The Garfield Movie has to nudge its title character out of his comfort zone. As such, the plot centres on an all-action Mission: Impossible-style infiltration of a dairy with the aim of freeing a lovestruck cow and reuniting her with her beloved bull in the field outside, while evading a security guard inexplicably modelled on Frances McDormand in Fargo. Now, admittedly it’s been a while since I actually read a Garfield strip, but I think I remember him leaving the kitchen about twice.

But the problem isn’t that the film is trying something new. It’s that it isn’t, since the result is so crushingly generic – reconstituted Chicken Run here, Despicable Me offcuts there – that it feels like it might have been built in advance as a sort of brandable prototype, ready to house any cartoon animal who wanted it.

With a quick control-X and control-V, it could just as easily be The Bugs Bunny Movie, or The Tom and Jerry Movie, or virtually Anyone Else’s you can think of. And while the off-the-peg CG looks fine, no attempt has been made to incorporate the tone or feel of the original newspaper strips, despite the (also digitally animated) Peanuts Movie showing the difference could be stylishly split back in 2015.

The classic Garfield material in the trailer is rattled through early on, arriving via a flashback that shows the laconic ginger moggy (voiced by Chris Pratt, as Chris Pratt) seemingly being abandoned as a baby by his father Vic. The two are then reunited for the dairy heist, which gives them a reason to bond, though I have to say I was thrown somewhat by Vic a) being voiced by Samuel L Jackson, and b) having the physique of a powerlifter, which doesn’t read visually as paternal so much as ‘roided up.

The script, meanwhile, is very American, with jokes about brands that British children won’t have heard of, and the sort of banter more liable to irritate than amuse. Hannah Waddingham’s villainous Persian, Jinx, is a particular offender in this regard – though the Ted Lasso actress does voice her character with a highly convincing Mirren-esque purr, which might have been more fun under happier circumstances.

This doesn’t quite make Garfield an Emoji Movie-level cause for despair. Like the two regrettable Bill Murray-voiced live-action versions from the Noughties, it’s just a product that behaves like one – which is a pity, since studio animation is now bolder and more dynamic than it has been for years. Not hellish – but pretty purr-gatorial.

U cert, 101 mins. In cinemas from May 24