★½ (2/5 Stars)
Five-year-olds who like talking animals and don't care about plot holes. Anyone else—including die-hard Jim Davis comic strip fans—will find it a bland, reheated plate of leftovers. garfield 2
A Lasagna-Sized Letdown: More Filler Than Thriller ★½ (2/5 Stars) Five-year-olds who like talking animals
The biggest sin? It isn't very funny. The slapstick is tired, the animal CGI hasn’t aged well (the lip-sync on Garfield is distractingly stiff), and the “British” humor boils down to stuffy butlers and golf jokes. Even the climactic chase sequence involving a dozen angry animals feels more like a theme park filler ride than a proper finale. It isn't very funny
Garfield 2 isn’t offensively bad. It’s worse: it’s boring. You’ll laugh once (Murray’s ad-lib about "royal water pressure" is a gem) and spend the remaining 78 minutes wishing the cat would take a nap so the credits would roll. Save this one for a rainy day when you’ve already watched the actual Parent Trap twice.
On paper, this should work. Bill Murray returns as the voice of Garfield, delivering his usual deadpan sarcasm. And for the first twenty minutes, watching Garfield gorge himself on room service and insult dogs (including a returning, thankfully minimized Odie) is mildly amusing. The problem is the pacing. The film grinds to a halt whenever it focuses on the live-action humans. Jon Arbuckle (Breckin Meyer) is reduced to a bumbling tourist, and his love interest (Jennifer Love Hewitt) has so little to do that she seems surprised she’s still in the movie.