The Cat In The Hat (2003)

Before I go one step further into this review I have to tell you that this is not necessarily the WORST Dr. Seuss (aka: Theodore Geisel) book adaptation I have ever seen. It's up there, but it's not the worst.

The worst for me growing up was TV's "The Lorax", which thoroughly depressed me as a child for all the desolation wrought by the end of the tale, never mind that saving the environment was the message - this was a comedown for a small child expecting the lightness of "Green Eggs and Ham" or the frivolity of "And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street".

This is also not the worst live-action adaptation of one of the good Doc's stories. THAT would be How The Grinch Stole Christmas (also one of Ron Howard's most dumbed-down enterprises since Angels and Demons).

But The Cat in the Hat succeeds in being pretty much a full-fledged failure overall; not only as a kids' movie, not only as a comedy, not only as a star vehicle and not only as an overblown adaptation of a much-shorter source (The Polar Express, anyone?), but as an example that Hollywood cannot produce quality children's films but succeeds only in creating nightmares.

Big, candy bright Technicolor nightmares. With furries.

In the early 2000s, "Seussical: The Musical" was a big hit on-and-off Broadway and led people to believe that such whimsical flights of fancy should be brought to the big screen for all to enjoy, not only those who have access to the footlights of the stage, the roar of the greasepaint and so on.

So Hollywood, in its infinite wisdom, took one of Ted's best-loved books - in this case a little story about two kids, their pet goldfish and a giant biped talking cat with a red bow tie and a red-and-white striped hat - and made this simple little 61-page book into an 82-minute, $109 million dollar blockbuster extravaganza.

Gee, what a good idea.

So, what did they do to extend this simple little story of a huge talking cat and how he tried to make a rainy day fun? This: Conrad (Spencer Breslin) and Sally (Dakota Fanning) Walden are home alone with their pet fish while their mother (Kelly Preston) is at work at Humberfloob Realty. It is raining outside, and there is nothing to do since they promised to keep the house from getting messy for the big party to take place later that day. Problem is, Conrad likes to play messy, dangerous games with trays, flights of stairs and various food products, and Sally is a list-making, rule-following, nit-picking worrywart. And to make matters worse, a next-door Lothario named Quinn (Alec Baldwin) has designs on their mom and plans to keep the kids busy and out of his hair. With all of this going on, it's no wonder they are chosen that day for a visit by The Cat in the Hat (Mike Myers), who introduces them to mind-bending hallucinogenic games that involve rule-breaking, mess-making, dog-kidnapping and their imagination. Of course it's all fun and games, until a mysterious red box gets unlocked and the warped world of The Cat is unleashed and twists Conrad and Sally's world into a horrifically warped nightmare, forcing the kids to get The Cat under control and set things right before their mom gets back. Oh, and they have to make cupcakes for the party, too.

I know and you're right; that's an awful lot of liberty to take with a small story wherein half of the pages were taken up with pictures. We can pretty much blame writers Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer for this - what can you expect from past writers for TV's "Seinfeld" (a show about nothing) adapting a children's book (which was very little to begin with)?

One problem with The Cat In The Hat is that this is NOT a children's movie. Nope, not a bit. There are so many sexual double-entendres, so many almost naughty words, the repeated victimization of a narcoleptic Asian babysitter (Amy Hill), making out with garden utensils and nose-picking that you have to wonder if high school students had a say in the adaptation.

Something else altogether is the direction by Bo Welch, whose name should be familiar to anyone who has seen such movies as Beetle Juice, Ghostbusters II, Men in Black, Men in Black II, Wild Wild West and Land of the Lost, since he produced all of these and more. Of course, as everyone knows, producers make the best directors: just look at Joel Schumacher...oh wait, he was a costume designer. Never mind. Anyway, Bo's only past directing credits had been TV episodes of "Secret Agent Man" and the live-action "Tick" series, which were his only prep for a live action Dr. Seuss story. Good, Hollywood. Real good.

Then we have the matter of the actors themselves. Spencer Breslin and Dakota Fanning were two of the better child actors of their generation and handle the roles of Conrad and Sally, respectively, as well as they can under the circumstances. In fact, theirs are the most restrained roles in this thing.

The remainder are another story: Amy Hill plays a narcoleptic Asian babysitter like a really bad stereotype who is used for nothing more than a prop (literally - they even use her as a flotation device at one point!).

Sean Hayes is both the high-strung germ-o-phobe boss Humberfloob and the voice of the kids' pet fish and plays them both the same way - shrill.

Kelly Preston plays the kids' Mom as a very harried and overworked Mom in tight-fitting dresses with nice amounts of cleavage (how fitting for A KID'S MOVIE!!!).

And then Alec Baldwin is an odious jerk with a conniving smile and a devious sneer - and also plays a character in this film who loves the Mom character and hates kids (ZING! See what I did there?), but his part only serves as a time filler to add another character to a story which originally had only five (and one disembodied voice), and now has dozens (including bit players who, among their number, is Paris Hilton. Of course. Why not?).

Besides the overblown comic acting, the bizarre set design straight out of one of Salvador Dali's migraine headaches and color schemes that Picasso could do nothing with, you know two of the worst things about this movie?

Two of them? Two?

The first thing is The Cat himself. I don't know who it was who finally decided on casting Mike Myers, who hasn't exactly had a strong batting average playing anyone outside of Wayne Campbell, Austin Powers or Shrek. But the costumer and makeup people turned him into a kabuki dancer wearing a fur-covered Danskin. This Cat has a face that would send kids into shrieking fits (and not of laughter), has an annoying characteristic of changing vocal patterns every so often (even affecting a Scottish brogue at one point - go figure) and whose every other line is directed at the audience. Oh, and apparently Myers modeled his Cat after, among others, Charles Nelson Reilly. If only he had played The Cat JUST LIKE Charles Nelson Reilly, maybe we'd have something.

The other really bad thing about this movie? Two more things, actually. Thing 1 and Thing 2, respectively. These are two little hyperactive demonic abominations with faces like rats and hair out of a troll doll's styling book. They may be modeled exactly like their characters in the book, but somehow the book characters of Thing 1 and Thing 2 didn't seem to want to swallow the viewers' souls.

Oh, it's not like the movie didn't make money; after the overseas take was tallied in, it made a slight profit, but did nowhere near as well as expected. After all, this was one of THE bigger hyped movies of 2003 and a lot of expectations were hung on this Cat's hat. Plus, there were a plethora of tie-ins, promos, contests, sweepstakes, commercials and Cat In The Hat toys free with your Kid's Meal - my guess is most of this film's budget probably went into advertising.

In the history of wrong-headed movie ideas, this ranks right up there with making a movie out of a string of Beatles songs (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) and a Jerry Lewis movie about German clowns in Nazi concentration camps (The Day the Clown Cried). In fact, The Cat in the Hat didn't even need the addition of Paris Hilton to guarantee it would under-perform. All it needed was a small book, dozens of producers, writers who have no idea what underplaying their story meant and actors who throw the volume up to 11 and there you have it: Crap In The Hat.

The Seuss adaptations didn't stop, though: later on, we got a big-screen version of Horton Hears a Who, which actually earned much better than Cat if only for the sole virtue that it was at least animated.

Which makes me think they should have left well-enough alone and stuck with the 1971 TV version they already had of "The Cat In The Hat". At least that one kept narcoleptic Asians, high-strung fish and sexual innuendos at bay. Not to mention Paris Hilton hadn't even been born yet.

As for this movie, allow me to end with a bit of Seussian terminology:

I know this flick's bad, not good-natured or sunny,
Has actors not talented, amusing nor funny,
And all that it has is a tall, hairy jerk
That looks like a cat - it just doesn't work.


The Cat In The Hat is really a stinker,
With works of Doc Seuss, Hollywood shouldn't tinker.
They just mess it up with vim, verve and zing.
Avoid this bad flick, the whole blasted thing.


In fact, keep your kids from being all fussy
And keep them away from this big, stinky...

uh...cat.

(Geez, Geisel made it look so easy....)