Comic strips should not be made into movies. I don't say that out of cartoon snobbery, or even the belief that you can't build a cinematic character three or four panels at a time. The problem is that mainstream American films are plot-based, and comic strips are not. The humor in Jim Davis' cartoon is observational or situational. When the titular overfed feline gives speeches about the glory of lasagna or simply lays about lethargically, these feel like Garfield moments, but they do not a film make. So the running time is padded with a plot that has our orange hero engaging in slapstick heroics or performing zany dance numbers. And Garfield is not zany.
However, if you don't have a stuffed rendition of the kitty suction-cupped to your windshield, you probably don't care if the cinematic version is true to the character. But even if you're content to put up with a generic cartoon cat (voiced by Bill Murray, who shouldn't be slumming at this point in his career), there's still the matter of tolerating his intolerable real-life costars, Breckin Meyer and Jennifer Love Hewitt. As Jon, the cat's owner, and Liz, his love interest, these two are nauseatingly cute and bumbling. Even kids—who don't know any better than to laugh at the cat—will yawn through their flirtations.
The plot, stolen from The Prince and the Pauper, has Garfield switching places with his princely doppelganger in England. The mistake is understandable. In the world of Garfield, these are the only two CGI animals on an otherwise normal planet Earth. This particular royal cat has inherited a large fortune, inspiring Duke Dargis (Billy Connolly, wishing he was John Cleese) to plot murders for each of the cat's nine pampered lives. Most of the gags are stale—like Garfield and his twin mimicking each other's actions, both unsure if the other is merely a reflection—but kids too young to have seen the bit in other cartoons will probably get a kick out of it.
Parents, however, are liable to feel like they're experiencing the film's running time in cat years. Garfield will imprison your child's attention span as much as any other cartoon. But as films with digital animals in the real world go, it's no Scooby-Doo. Are you really brave enough to see a film to which that statement applies?