November 21, 2003 | Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat , a surreally rambunctious farce inspired by the popular children’s book, is something that doesn’t happen: Mike Myers, a merrily manic comic actor with a penchant for chewing up scenery, isn’t himself chewed up by the spectacular sets and special effects in this garishly overproduced yet sporadically inspired romp.
That’s no mean feat, considering the amount of high-calorie eye-candy on display. First-time director Bo Welch informs the production with his singular experiences as an Oscar-nominated production designer, often echoing images he originally created for Tim Burton ( Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands ) and Barry Sonnenfeld ( Men in Black ). With a little help from a vast army of behind-the-scenes talents, Welch vividly re-imagines the original Seussian storybook setting as a widescreen wonderland of pastel-colored suburbs, theme-parkish Main Streets and overall retro-futurism.
The human characters are coiffured and costumed with just the right amount of cartoonish stylization – and, better still, are performed accordingly by game supporting players – while the hyperactivity that abounds as the plot proceeds is aptly pitched at the level of ever-increasing anarchy. Even a disappointingly familiar mini-apocalypse that threatens to overwhelm the final scenes has a tongue-in-cheeky touch of candy-coated Hieronymus Bosch.
But none of this would seem nearly so witty without the kitty.
As the sassy, brassy tabby in the stovepipe chapeau, Myers is a meowing and wowing wonder, the most fabulously funny feline to frisk and frolic in a live-action movie since The Cowardly Lion joined Dorothy on the yellow brick road. It helps, of course, that his performance is enhanced with high-tech accoutrements (flexible black-and-white fur-suit, computer-controlled tail, etc.) and CGI tweaking. But it helps even more that Myers is, well, Myers.
Even while disciplined by practicalities – in an F/X-heavy fantasy, you have to hit your marks precisely, and hold your positions interminably, while the movie magic erupts all around you – Meyers finds ample wriggle-room for improvised riffing. He pounces on every opportunity for wink-wink, nudge-nudge pop-culture references. (Note the smirky joy he takes in alluding to product placements and soundtrack sales.) And his capacity for mimicry is indefatigable. At various points in this fast-and-furious farce, he appears to channel Nathan Lane, Bugs Bunny, Burt Lahr (in his Wizard of Oz mode, of course) and a couple of Meyers’ own comic characters, the impish Dr. Evil of the Austin Powers movies and the coffee-klatching Linda Richmond of Saturday Night Live . Better still, he’s so naughty-boy appealing that he’s able to get away with some mildly risqué humor that might otherwise seem, in a family-movie context, borderline-offensive.
Screenwriters Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schafer do a serviceable job of expanding Dr. Seuss’ 1,620-word storybook into a feature-length plot. (But just barely – the movie clocks in under 80 minutes, plus extended closing credits.) As in the original scenario, school-age siblings Sally (Dakota Fanning) and Conrad (Spencer Breslin) are left at home on a rainy day by a busy mom (Kelly Preston) who warns them not to muss the living room during her absence. The movie complicates matters a bit: On screen, Mom (Kelly Preston) is a single parent with a demanding boss (Sean Hayes) and a smarmy suitor (an almost too-effective Alec Baldwin), while Sally is a budding control freak and Conrad is a rebellious rule-breaker.
But don’t worry: The Cat himself remains the ultimate Bad Influence, a wild and crazy kitty who unleashes chaos – and, while doing so, turns the family home into a mass of splattered rubble – even as he delivers the same moral Dr. Seuss stealthily planted in the verse of his beloved book. It’s worth noting, however, that something gets lost in the translation: While the book ultimately cautions against having too much fun, the movie comes down firmly on the side of liberating bedlam, which winds up making its final warning about undisciplined revelry seem half-hearted at best. It’s almost as though the filmmakers felt duty-bound to deliver a “responsible” message – “Don’t try this at home, kids!” – only because they were, at heart, fraidy cats.
