My Review of "The Cat in the Hat"

I don't remember there being a ton of content to make a movie about when I remember the kids book "The Cat in the Hat" by Dr. Seuss. I guess I was wrong. They made a full kids movie about of this book back in 2003. They haven't seemed to stop making movie adaptations of Dr. Seuss books since then so they must be doing something right?

This movie is centered on two children, Conrad, played by Spencer Breslin, and Sally, played by Dakota Fanning. Their mother, played by Kelly Preston, has an important work dinner that she is hosting and needs the kids to not make a mess in the house. The problem is that Conrad is a snot nosed kid that never listens and will do the opposite of everything he gets told.

They soon encounter the Cat in the Hat. He brings even more chaos to the house and they soon realize maybe there has to be balance between fun and rules. The movie goes into some imaginative chaos after the Cat in the Hat is introduced to the kids.

I would have to say that this movie is a bit of a mess. It's all over the place and maybe it's purposely designed to be this way. To me, it was a little too chaotic to keep up with. Adding to the chaos is the art direction of the film. The film looks like a straight up Tim Burton film. The color choices and environment seem very Burtonesque but I realize that it's emulating the book more than it is any Tim Burton movie.

They definitely have the Dr. Seuss art direction down and did a good job with the color pallets and environments. The way they designed the Cat in the Hat, played by Mike Myers is pretty spot on. The movie depends a lot on Myer's charm to keep the movie going. However, much of characters that Myer's brings out as the Cat in the Hat derive from a lot of his already well known characters like Shrek, Austin Powers and movies he's done. You're really not seeing anything new in this movie.

As an adult watching this movie you can't get but really annoyed by the Cat in the Hat and the Conrad character. They're just making chaos and destroying the place for fun. I empathized with the mother more than anything. The whole first half of the movie was just seeing a house getting destroyed when you know that the poor hard working single mom is trying to get her life in order and this little brat was ruining for her. It was torture and painful but I'm sure kids would love it.

The pacing of the movie is erratic and it takes some getting used to in order to keep watching it. I actually couldn't believe I watched through the whole thing. I was falling asleep in many of the scenes but was able to keep my eyes open for this one.

There are some hidden adult jokes here and there but I wouldn't say they were enough to make adults think this is a fun ride. It is anything but a fun ride.

They did however hire a pretty good cast of actors that did their characters justice. The problem was that they didn't have good material to act on. It's tough for a story writer to make a whole movie off a 61 page book with just 1600 words. I don't blame the writers, it's a very difficult feat to accomplish.

Overall, this movie seems like a cash grab aimed at kids because of the popularity of Dr. Seuss. They relied on star power and name branding to get viewership for his movie. To be honest I don't know how the Dr. Seuss movies do so well and continue doing so well after watching this movie but then The Transformers series has been kicking it pretty well. I really did not enjoy this movie so I'll have to give this movie a 3 out of 10. I really hoped it would have been better but it was really bad. I don't recommend this movie to anyone.