Review: 'The Garfield Movie' feels like a cynical cash grab

It’s hard out there for family audiences. First the quality deficit of last week’s "IF" and now the further descent of "The Garfield Movie," only in theaters and probably your first destination choice for kids over the Memorial holiday weekend. What a bummer.

This misbegotten misfire looks to score at the box office until dire word of mouth kills it. Why the letdown? "The Garfield Movie" is brand marketing from filmmakers who don’t even bother to hide the blatant product placement. Lacking inspiration and perspiration, this despairingly off-kilter toon looks like a movie, talks like a movie, but feels like a cynical cash grab.

All the elements are there. It’s an outdoor adventure for everyone’s favorite indoor cat. There’s Chris Pratt voicing Garfield, the tubby orange tabby who hates Mondays and loves lasagna. Samuel L. Jackson does the honors for his cool cat dad Vic.

What goes wrong? Start with the basic idea. Gone is the deadpan sarcasm of the comic strip that Jim Davis started in 1978 and continued in a syndicated TV series. The casual putdowns that Bill Murray built into two "Garfield" live-action movies from the aughts is also MIA.

"The Garfield Movie," soon to be infamous for its bad decisions, turns the mouthy, shamelessly lazy Garfield into an action hero, voiced by Pratt with an energetic whoosh you hear in his Mario in "The Super Mario Bros. Movie." What the whoosh is doing here defies understanding.

After a prologue showing Garfield abandoned as a kitten by dad Vic and adopted into a cushy life by the human and humane Jon Arbuckle (Nicholas Hoult), Garfield is off to the mischief races with Jon’s not-too-bright dog Odie (Harvey Guillén does the barks and whimpers).

In no time, Garfield and Odie are kidnapped by the feline Jinx (Hannah Waddingham), a criminal crony of Vic’s who blames him for botching a milk heist that sent her to the pound. Having escaped, Jinx forces Vic, Garfield and Odie into a second robbery that intensifies the risk.

It’s doubtful that creator Davis and Garfield fans of the last half century would recognize the over-caffeinated kitty in these generic pyrotechnics directed by Mark Dindal ("The Emperor’s New Groove," "Chicken Little"). "I do my own stunts," brags Garfield, "me and Tom Cruise."

So there goes smartphone junkie Garfield (the better to order food), zipping around like a speed demon on a mission impossible that Cruise himself would envy as the tabby bends back a tree branch like a slingshot to shoot himself through the air and onto a speeding train.

Yikes! Who is this super kittycat? Did you ever imagine sleepyhead Garfield mixing it up with Jinx and her doggie criminal peeps, Roland (Brett Goldstein) and Nolan (Bowen Yang). It’s a wonder they didn’t put Garfield in a mask and pass him off as a Marvel superhero.

Credit the movie with tugging at the heartstrings by reuniting Garfield and his daddy. But the script by Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgove and David Reynolds feels like like artificial intelligence cobbled it together from other, better movies (think "The Secret Life of Pets").

Nowhere to be seen is the cat who made a joke out of casual indifference. To enjoy "The Garfield Movie," it will help to be five years old or under, though even the toddler set is likely to cough up this recycled 101-minute hairball and move on. I suggest you do the same.