The Cat in the Hat (2003)

(On Cable TV, October 2021) Star power is a double-edged sword, as The Cat in the Hat certainly shows. On the plus side, you’ve got Mike Myers in fine form showboating through a script very loosely inspired by the classic Dr. Seuss book, almost literally chewing through scenery and making asides to the camera (and the adults watching) in an energetic, nay, anarchic fashion. On the minus side, this unbridled performance is utterly unlike the spirit of the Seuss book and it doesn’t take much for the irritation to set in. Add to that the grotesque catlike makeup given to Myers and you’ve got something that requires some indulgence to tolerate. Considering that I’m not all that attached to Seuss’ work (his material isn’t as popular in my native French), deviations from the original story don’t really bother me—in fact, considering the made-up word salad often found in Seuss’ work, I’d rather not focus too much on being faithful. But Myers can be exasperating in manic mode, and there isn’t a single wall left standing when he’s done breaking the sets down. The wink-wink-nudge-nudge jokes he addresses to the adults are a baffling departure of what the book stands for—maybe funny in a desacralization fashion, but certainly not family-appropriate. The Cat in the Hat is at least as colourful as it’s hyperactive: everything is shot in bright colours and fantastic designs that don’t have much to do with realism. It’s a good thing that the result is only 82 minutes, because any longer would have been too much. There are some wonderful stories of Mike Myers being a very unpleasant person working on the film, and those anecdotes do fit really well with the theory that he had an oversized influence on the result, improvising material rather than sticking to the vision. Ah well—the Seuss estate made some hasty changes to its movie adaptation rights following The Cat in the Hat, and seeing the results since then (three much-better animated versions of classic Seuss tales), we can see that the debacle actually served a purpose.