The Cat in the Hat (2003)
Also known as "Dr Seuss' The Cat in the Hat "
Don't mess with the hat.
Starring: Mike Myers, Alec Baldwin, Kelly Preston, Dakota Fanning, Spence Breslin, Amy Hill, Sean Hayes, Daniel Ryan Chuchran, Taylor Rice, Brittany Oaks, Talia Prairie, Don Castellaneta, Daran Norris, Paris Hilton
Director: Bo Welch
Running Time: 82 minutes
US MPAA rating: N/AUK BBFC rating: PG
Adventure, Comedy, Family, Fantasy
In 1957, Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr Seuss, published 'The Cat in the Hat', a tale of two bored children stuck at home on a rainy day, and the feline stranger whose anarchic antics transform their boredom into a strange fusion of fun and anxiety. It had striking illustrations, charming rhymes, and a magically surreal story capturing the clash between childrens' need for order and desire for chaos. Readers might, like the two children, know that the house will have to be cleaned, but they are still thrilled by the mess which the cat makes of it - and one of the book's greatest delights is its lack of any clear moral orientation.
The basic plot (and it was pretty basic) of Dr Seuss' book can still be discerned in Bo Welch's bigscreen adaptation, played out when the children Conrad and Sally and their pet fish are visited by the mercurial cat and his blue-haired accomplices Thing 1 and Thing 2. Welch's previous work as production designer for Tim Burton is evident in the look of this film, where the 1950s pastel vision of suburbia from 'Edward Scissorhands' is combined with the slightly inchoate style of Seuss' drawing, creating an impressively stylised world for the larger-than-life characters.
Inevitably, however, there are hatfuls of new material added to bring the film up to feature length, and most of these serve to distract and irritate like unwanted hairballs. New secondary characters seem largely superfluous - the mother's cleanliness-obsessed boss Mr Humberfloop (Sean 'Will and Grace' Hayes, who also voices the equally uptight fish) makes brief, unnecessary appearances at beginning and end, the babysitter Mrs Kwan (Amy Hill) literally sleeps through the entire film, and the mother's smarmily deceitful suitor Quinn (Alec Baldwin) seems to be there merely to make the cat look more sympathetic by comparison. And there lies the real problem - much of the film is padded out by the comic business of Mike Myers' cat, in a deeply flawed rôle falling somewhere between a stand-up dying on stage or an alcoholic clown harassing kids at a birthday party. Myers has always made self-deprecation a virtue, but even he looks decidedly uncomfortable all furred-up as such a creepy character, whose manic routines have all been done before, and much better, in 'Beetlejuice' and 'The Mask'.
As is the Hollywood way, this film gives its young audience far less credit than the book on which it is based, importing a moral message that is completely alien to Seuss, and somewhat incoherent. According to the cat's 'phun-o-meter', Sally (Dakota Fanning) is a 'control freak', and Conrad (Spencer Breslin) is a 'rule breaker', but by the end we are told that they have learnt from their 'mistakes' and so become 'just right' - although with the focus very much on Conrad, it is never clear what exactly Sally's mistake has been, or indeed what she learns. Still, even if it remains to be seen whether Fanning can break out of always being cast as a precocious priss (as in Uptown Girls), she is a definite talent well worth watching, and here, amidst everyone else's burping, she offers perfect, dignified delivery of some of the film's only adult lines. (See also Gary Panton's review)
It's Got: Pastel colours, a talking fish, some gross-out humour, a gratuitous scene in a nightclub (during the day!) with a cameo from Paris Hilton.
It Needs: Jokes that are actually funny rather than just creepy.
Alternatives: The Grinch, 'Beetlejuice', 'The Mask'
Summary: Impressively stylised visual recreation of the world of Dr Seuss, minus the charm - and his jokes were never this paw.
External Links
Official Web Site
The Cat in the Hat at the IMDB
