GARFIELD: THE MOVIE

In fairness, it's hard to take exception to GARFIELD. Aimed solidly at kids, it is well-intentioned and harmless. It's not very funny, but the jokes are sort of Saturday morning cartoon jokes nobody punches them very hard, so the movie doesn't have the exhaustion factor that is usually part of bad comedy. Then again, because the Jim Davis comic strip on which GARFIELD is based is not aimed at youngsters per se, the already mild edginess has been mellowed. Garfield's human John (Breckin Meyer) is no longer a hopeless loser and Garfield himself is no longer quite the obliviously selfish creature he is on paper, which gives the movie a sort of watered-down feel for material that is pretty lightweight from the outset.

Garfield (voiced by Bill Murray) is living a life of perfect contentment with his good-natured, tolerant feeder/shelter provider ("owner" in this context is a misnomer), overeating and lolling about. Then John's crush on Garfield's pretty vet (Jennifer Love Hewitt) results in John winding up with a dog, Odie. Garfield is horrified at having to share John, but when the cat locks the friendly dog out on the porch and Odie is kidnapped by an unscrupulous local TV personality, the cat discovers his inner tiger and goes to the rescue.

The screenplay by Joel Cohen and Alex Sokolow feels like an amiable episodic cartoon or afternoon children's special and director Peter Hewitt moves the action along at a leisurely pace. The CGI Garfield looks okay on his own terms, but is a bit jarring beside the rest of the cats and dogs in the film, all played by real live-action animals.

Murray is suitably casual as the self-involved feline, though not as droll as he can be, while Meyer and Hewitt go about their good-hearted, underwritten roles with professionalism, Tobolowsky is suitably villainous and Michael Monks as a policeman does an excellent job of convincing us he's interacting three-dimensionally with the CGI cat.

GARFIELD has few ambitions it is not mean-spirited, doesn't elbow you in the ribs and is generally innocuous. These are reasons not to hate it, but there aren't many reasons to see it either, except for diehard fans of the comic strip who don't mind a little tampering with the tone and parents of animal-loving offspring.