The Garfield Movie review: Cast dial it in for this cartoon catastrophe

In cinemas; Cert G

Vic (Garfield's dad, voiced by Samuel L Jackson) and the cat himself (voiced by Chris Pratt) in 'The Garfield Movie'

Chris Wasser

The new Garfield film is obsessed with Tom Cruise. Ving Rhames, an invaluable player in Cruise’s never-ending Mission: Impossible saga, lends his voice to proceedings and – if you’re still awake after the first half – you might notice Lalo Schifrin’s stirring M:I theme during the heist sequence.

What, you may ask, is a heist sequence doing in a Garfield flick? There are no easy answers.

Later, a gag about Garfield doing his own stunts, like Tom; another that borrows the score from Top Gun (no, really).

Around all this exists a feckless, flattened animation about a moody orange tabby (Garfield, voiced by a charmless Chris Pratt) who reunites with his estranged street cat father, Vic (Samuel L Jackson, phoning it in), to rob a state-of-the-art dairy factory (don’t ask).

Somehow, Mark Dindal’s cartoon required the collective brain power of three screenwriters.

A sizeable group, and I guess the baby Garfield origins bit is lovely. But the rest is just noise, and there is little evidence to suggest that anyone involved with this ugly, uninspired and largely unfunny feature is even remotely familiar with Jim Davis’s original comic strip. A total catastrophe.

Two stars