The Cat in the Hat 2003

My family bought "The Cat In the Hat" on DVD when it was first released. I suppose my kids were about 5 and 9 years old at the time. We watched it together but none of us liked it. The kids were bored. My wife and I were bored. We may or may not have even finished watching it. The only thing I recall for certain is that I threw it in a drawer. At the time, I recall asking my wife, "This is Dr. Seuss?!?"

Now, some 10+ years later...tonight, I dug out the old DVD. Why? What compelled me to watch this? After over a decade gone by. With almost 200 movies cued up in my watchlist that I want to see. With countless cable channels with movies and TV series available with a simple click of a remote control...why now? What mysterious force brought me to this movie? Tonight. Why tonight?

This movie is not right. There's something...off, about it. Oh sure. There's some bad jokes, some actors sleeping their way through their roles. But it's just the strangeness of it. The look of the movie is odd. Everyone looks empty. There's so much conformity. The houses and the cars. The yards and trees.

Mike Meyers as the Cat looks sick and I don't mean got-a-cold sick. His makeup and costume look wrong. And then there's the violence emanating from the Cat. It's disturbing. The Cat ogles a picture of the children's mother and dances suggestively with a woman in a nightclub. It has a fondness for dirty language and innuendo. It threatens to "end" someone and "make it look like a bloody accident". It wields a cleaver.

The Cat brings with it the unknown and perhaps even unconstrained evil when it unleashes the chaotic forces that are Thing 1 and Thing 2. It opens a portal to another dimension. What is going on? And why, with all this insanity, was I laughing?

I don't know how to rate this. I don't understand if I've witnessed something strange or wicked. Something good or bad? Why "The Cat In the Hat"? Why tonight? Why now...

It's not hard to see where they borrowed inspiration. The colorful town, the rhymes, the ridiculous gadgets and gizmos, and the main character in a full-fledged furry outfit and makeup-heavy face is a well-known comedian. This was all borrowed inspiration from The Grinch yet doesn't work so well in this movie as I somewhat remember it doing - and the main reason comes down to concept. I'm all for creative liberties, as long as the movie actually makes it clear what liberties were taken. The book was really good at showing how miserable the kids were, and how much they really, truly needed this Cat in the Hat to enjoy life to view it in a different light. This movie...not so much. The spirit and idea of the book is missing in the film, and nothing replaces it. Instead, what we have is a Cat in the Hat that shows up unannounced to a family that's really not super miserable...and he just does his thing anyway. For no real reason. They refrain from presenting any point to why this character is in their home.

It's like this...the filmmakers wanted to make more money off of the fans of the Grinch movie that they gave us a movie without any real plot or substance. Sure, there's a Cat in a Hat that's doing a bunch of random, weird crap which is the epitome of physical humor - but again, no real reason as to why he's doing anything. I felt as if the Cat in the Hat was high on Crack...and maybe so was I. That's too bad. There's a reason the book exists and why it's so popular, it teaches kids a meaningful lesson - and it would be easy for a movie to do the same...it was just too lazy to even try.

I'm not entirely sure Mike Meyers was the right choice for this either. He is a comedian, yes, but a comedian that's rather known to joke about inappropriate things that kids shouldn't hear - and he was doing the same thing here...maybe to make parents laugh while watching with their kids, but it wasn't subtle and kids aren't dumb - they should have picked a different actor for him.

I sort of remember liking The Cat in the Hat, but the only parts of this film that I actually remember was maybe the first half hour - because that was the closest to matching the book - at least the actual things that happen in both. The rest of the movie was a tedious mess. Regardless of the fact that this movie is only 80 minutes long, I wanted to claw my brain out of my skull. This is a movie that should be long forgotten.