Review of The Cat in the Hat (2003) by Mrmoviebuff — 21 Aug 2016

Where do I begin to describe this awful mess of a film? A film that has no right to be called a "family film", a film that does everything it can to not be funny, a film that wastes the talent of Mike Myers in the lead role as Dr. Seuss' "The Cat in the Hat".

The movie, directed by Bo Welch, sees two kids Conrad (Spencer Breslin) and Sally (Dakota Fanning) often misbehaving, and their single mother, Joan (Kelly Preston) who works in a Real Estate tries to get them to understand how to behave. Conrad ends up messing the house up, and it seems that Joan is dating their next door neighbor, Lawrence (Alec Baldwin), which Conrad isn't happy with.

One day, the kids find out that there is a strange, human-like sized cat in their house, this turns out to be "The Cat in the Hat" (an obnoxious Mike Myers), who causes chaos once he has entered their lives. We see the Cat doing many crazy and obnoxious things, much to the point where you'd think the movie's plot has gone out for a walk. The colorful cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki, is more of an eye-sore than it is eye-popping. There is no sense of realism, but at the same time, there is also no sense of whimsy... it lives in a fantasy world where everything is animated to the point where you'd also think, why is this live action, again?

The humor in this film is also ill-timed, take a scene for example, where Mike Myers' the Cat sees a picture of the children's mother and his hat expands in size as he lustfully gazes at this picture, then the kids tell him that's their mother. Adult humor is allowed in kids' films and can work, but only when its subtle, this joke was not subtle in the slightest. None of them are. Take another scene, where we see our main characters riding along some kind of fantasy roller-coaster, and then the movie stops just so Mike Myers, as the Cat, can insert a little plug to a Universal Studios ride. The product placement and obvious advertising is shameful and should not have been in there to begin with.

This is a painful movie to sit through, none of the jokes are timed properly, none of the plot makes much sense, and the movie is just weird to look at. Family films could not get more obnoxious than this.