The Cat in the Hat: David Cantrell’s review

Posted by dcantrell on Apr 22nd, 2005

Five thoughts that came to mind while watching this movie:

  • Bad.
  • Tired.
  • Sleepy.
  • Exhausting.
  • I need a thneed.

I had high hopes for this movie. I liked Dr. Seuss books when I was a kid and thought this would be an enjoyable movie. It might have been if they didn’t get Mike Myers. Basically everything that Shea said above I agree with. This movie sucked. A lot. My favorite Seuss book is The Lorax.

I give this movie 0/10 because it was so terrible I had to force myself to sit there and watch it. Had we viewed this movie at my place, I would have probably gotten up to go to my computer.

The Cat in the Hat: David Shea’s review

Posted by David on Apr 22nd, 2005

Don’t mess with the hat

Rated PG for mild crude humor and some double-entendres.
Rated A-II by the USCCB (link)
Given a final score of 68 with an influence density of 0.57 by CAPAlert (link)

Starring Mike Myers, Alec Baldwin, and zombie Dr. Suess.

Viewed 2005-04-19 by David Cantrell, Mike Imamura, and David Shea

This is the kind of experience I associate with a bad movie: an hour and a half that lasts forever and leaves me feeling physically and emotionally drained. Unlike Earthquake, which left me with a similar feeling, The Cat in the Hat lacked several key elements, like a plot, character development, and an inexplicable cameo by Walter Matthau.

A kid’s movie that’s watchable by adults is an uncommon thing, but I don’t see how children could enjoy this movie, either. Its outlandish colors aren’t nearly enough to overcome the flat acting and utter lack of whimsy. The most tedious portions are those when Mike Myers isn’t on the screen, like the first twenty minutes of the film where the setting is built by the conversations of child actors and clichéd threats of military school, but even when he is on screen, the cat just isn’t very interesting. The problem is compounded by the cat not being particularly annoying, either. He’s just there, occasionally doing something zany or amusing, but otherwise he’s just filling space and yelling “Oh, Yeah!”, as if he were some sort of less-fun cousin of the Kool-Aid man.

One thing I did find interesting about this movie was its departure from the the traditional movie family structure. The two kids in the movie are being raised by a single, working, mostly absent mother who’s dating some slob next door (played by Alec Baldwin). I’m sure that the CAPAlert guy had a field day with that one. This unusual tidbit makes better material for a paper in an English class than it does for a good movie, though. In the end, this movie needs to be driven by zaniness, and in that it falls flat. Several attempts at this, like the Cat in the Hat rave party, are confusing instead of surreal, and the cartoonish physics of the kids and the cat jumping appear almost grotesque outside of a cartoon.

Despite its position at the top of the list, The Cat in the Hat’s numbers belie its true awfulness. Jaws III was a much better movie.