(I will not be rhyming in this review, so don't worry.)
Saying that the film adaptation of Dr. Seuss's children's book The Cat in the Hat is better than the abysmal adaptation of How The Grinch Stole Christmas is faint praise. Still, if you compare the two, The Cat in the Hat is an Academy Award winner while Grinch is an easily forgettable, garish little movie.
The main flaw with this mildly entertaining and humorous film is that it tries too hard to please the wrong people. This is an adaptation of a children's book. Over-the-top flatulence humor and off-color jokes about the attractive mother are unnecessary.
The plot of the film is familiar: A brother and sister, Conrad and Sally, are at home on a rainy day when a 6-feet-tall cat (Mike Myers) comes in and inspires them to mess the house. The Cat in the Hat is aided by famed sprites Thing One and Thing Two ("Chocolate Thun-da," as the second Thing likes to be called in the movie).
The book is as short as short can get, so screenwriters Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer ("Seinfeld") have to add a fully visualized version of the siblings' mother (Kelly Preston), her villainous boyfriend, a narcoleptic babysitter, and the germ-phobic Mr. Humberfloob.
Here, the complications are different. Mom's hosting a meet-and-greet at her house and if it doesn't go well, she's (say it with me) fired. Also, her boyfriend wants to send the mischievous Conrad to military school and marry the single mother. Both of these situations could be handled pretty well and with comic results.
But no. Instead, we get Myers channeling all of his characters from "Saturday Night Live" except for Wayne, Austin Powers, Dr. Evil and the Cowardly Lion - with a bit of Robin Williams as the Genie in Aladdin mixed in. It's a disturbingly strange brew: every five of 10 jokes hits on-target, but the other five fail miserably.
Unquestionably, Myers does the bulk of the work in the movie, which is fine, for the most part. But every once in a while, he makes a joke that sails right over the heads of the target audience: little kids. I imagine that some little children may see the gag where Cat goes gaga over a picture of Preston as the mother and ask their parents, "Mommy, why is the Cat's hat getting bigger?"
When I first saw this joke in the coming attractions preview, I snickered, but then, after seeing it a few more times, I came to realize that this joke was in the wrong movie. I don't know how you can find a place for it in a movie based on the work of Dr. Seuss.
Actually, a lot of the film's features appear to have landed in the wrong movie. Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat may be one of the strangest movies made in the past decade or so. Where else could you see Mike Myers dressed as a cat, and dressed as a little girl on a swing, bouncing along to the Commodores' "I'm Easy?" Similarly, nowhere else would you see Alec Baldwin sporting an insanely hairy and fake stomach.
You can look no further than this movie to see why Sean Hayes (who plays both the germophobe and the family goldfish) of NBC's "Will and Grace" has quickly gone from raucous sitcom star to shrill over-actor. I imagine the script meant for his human character to get particular satisfaction out of saying the word "fired," but there's a point when enough is enough. Also, why does Hayes try to do an impersonation of a British person faking an American accent? It's quite distracting.
Myers is the reason to see this movie, and this would be fine if we weren't supposed to feel bad for him in the final 10 minutes. To do that would mean we liked the Cat, but in a way, Myers' feline is slightly off-putting. Maybe it's just the unease we get from seeing a guy dressed up in a bulky cat suit, or maybe it's that Myers probably felt the need to dominate this movie too much. Either way, when the violins begin to play and we're meant to feel bad for the zany and slightly grating Cat, no emotions are evoked.
One thing that is dead-on is the production design. This comes as no surprise, since the director, first-timer Bo Welch, is a former production designer and worked on movies like Batman, Edward Scissorhands and Men In Black. With help from Alex McDowell of Minority Report and costume designer Rita Ryack, we're given a kaleidoscope of colors, a visual feast. If nothing else, this movie is able to capture a near-perfect illustration of the Seuss world. Even when we're thrust into the distorted world of the Cat in the Hat, the eye candy is amazing.
The acting, aside from Myers and Hayes, is fine. Dakota Fanning is perfectly cast as the anal-retentive young girl who is attached to her PDA. Spencer Breslin is also well-cast as Conrad, the troublemaker; Fanning and Breslin do a great job of making us believe they're siblings. Preston is blander than bland as their mother, but since her role is essentially the straight man, you can't really expect much more from her. Alec Baldwin is surprisingly good as her nasty boyfriend, but it's too bad we don't get a whole lot of explanation about his character. How can he afford such an expensive car if he doesn't have a job and is constantly visited by the repo man?
I dare say that, if they keep trying, Brian Grazer and Imagine Entertainment may eventually find a Seuss book to correctly adapt. I've heard that they're planning a Cat in the Hat sequel. My only advice would be this: remember who the books are for. They're not for 15-year old boys, they're for little children. Next time, play to the children.
Josh Spiegel is an entertainment reporter for the Web Devil. Reach him at joshua.spiegel@asu.edu.
