Cat in the Hat

[trekgeezer]

I can take or leave Myers, I liked Shrek (Eddie Murphy should stick with the voice over  parts).  Jim Carrie I liked when he was on  Living Color, but I will not watch him in a movie (just  trying to be a low rent  Robin Williams and not pulling it off). He is an idiot.  They are making a comedy out of the  Six Million Dollar Man starring this moron.

[AndyC]

I really hated the Grinch. I mean, when they took a half hour's worth of story and expanded it to feature length, they just took too many liberties in fleshing it out. By the time they were done, at least two thirds of the story was invented for the movie, and the rest was completely mangled. I hated the way they psychoanalyzed the Grinch and gave us reasons why he was grouchy, and gave a bunch of human weaknesses to the good and gentle Whos, essentially making them the villains. What crap.

I don't know to what degree The Cat in the Hat has been butchered, but the shameless merchandising should be some indication. I mean, I expect fast food tie-ins and toys and other junk, and I'm already seeing cardboard standees of Myers in the corner stores, but I saw a commercial on TV the other night that made my jaw drop. The movie isn't even out yet, and there is the Cat, selling half a dozen home cleaning products in one elaborate Seussian commercial. I swear I heard the good doctor turn over in his grave. Is this any way to treat a beloved children's classic? It's not even that they simply made a bad movie of it. In today's world, making a movie means dragging Seuss' good name through about six kinds of mud in the quest for more cash.

And the thing that p**ses me off most of all is that the original story will be irretrievably entangled with this garbage in the minds of many children, who will simply accept it as more of the story. Just like when Disney cranks out a straight-to-video sequel to Cinderella. It pollutes kids' minds and diminishes the classics, all for an easy profit.



Post Edited (11-21-03 15:50)

[Newt]

Radio Shack already has a Cat in the Hat  RC toy in their Christmas flyer described as "...from the hit movie."  Bit premature, what?

And does anybody else plain and simply feel Mike Myers was severely mis-cast in this? I have only seen the commercials (and have no intention of seeing the movie - ick) - but to me, MM in NO way resembles the cartoon critter - heck, he's short and fat!!!  It's just not right.

[FearlessFreep]

MM in NO way resembles the cartoon critter

Haven't seen the commericals yet but I've been wondering that myself...

[Velvet Brotha]

I think I may be biased due to the fact that I enjoy Jim Carrey and Mike Meyers to a certain degree. However, they do tend to be a little redundant at times. As for the new "Cat In The Hat" movie, I'm sure I'll be tortured with it over and over as the years go by. (I'm going to be a daddy ya know... : ) )

[Ash]

Burger King has an ad where the Cat drives up in his "car" and gets some food.

They tie that in with a Burger King special Christmas tree ornament special that is also being offered.

The marketing machine has already been swung into full gear on this film & once it gets going full speed, there will be no stopping it.



Post Edited (11-20-03 14:46)

[Chris K.]

Just brousing on the imdb.com about THE CAT IN THE HAT and stumbled across this review from Village Voice reviewer Michael Atkinson. Read on:

"Another kind of parent-kid warfare altogether, the new, obligatory post-Grinch movie version of THE CAT IN THE HAT comes scarily close to being the most unendurable Hollywood creation of the last dozen years. Of course, the Seuss original was a compact treatise on prepubescent id run amok and the attending dread of parental wrath, but snake-oil-selling producer Brian Grazer hyper-extends it into a Gogurt splooge of competing plot motivations, the ugliest design work since, well, THE GRINCH, and a free-associating Mike Myers done up as a kind of Dr. Moreau bastard spawn of Bert Lahr's Cowardly Lion and Charles Nelson Reilly. The jokes, even the s**t-dick-puke-balls bits aimed at titillating teens, are mortifyingly witless; the Things (1 and 2) look like face-lift-stretched actress heads on children's bodies; the story aches with preachifying (and distinctly un-Seussian) sanctimony. The spectacle of Alec Baldwin's fully committed performance as a neighborhood sleazebag on the make for the protagonists' mom evokes only sympathy—although, it's probably he who should pity us. Someone should have to answer, at any rate, for the level of reeking innuendo (mom's portrait opening into a Playboy centerfold, erecting the Cat's penile hat, for instance) that converts an American childhood totem—one that initiated more reading habits than any other book of the 20th century—into a feebleminded leer. You could read the film's two lonely moments of self-knowledge—when the Cat explicitly plugs Universal Studios' theme park and the film's own soundtrack—as salient irony, but amid this vomit they seem simply desperate. Thanks to Grazer's evil-genius demographic scheme, THE CAT IN THE HAT isn't fit for preteens, and it isn't digestible to adults. Teens, it needn't be said, should have better things—drugs, humping, Matrix sequels—with which to squander their weekends." - Michael Atkinson

As much as I couldn't swallow the other Brian Grazier Dr. Seuss-produced crapfest THE GRINCH, I have to wonder about how Grazier's mind works. I mean, what is it with Grazier turning classical Dr. Seuss characters with "sexual themes" attached to them. Does Grazier have a strange sexual fetish with these characters, or is this just the typical "We have to update the original to more modern, hipper themes"?  

Even so, I was actually looking forward to see THE CAT IN THE HAT, but now I guess I'll just wait for it to show up on video. Maybe I'll go see BAD SANTA instead.

[Susan]

Mike Meyers has gone way too commercial, he must really be rolling in the money. I'm one of the few who cannot stand austin powers..or much else he does. That cat in the hat movie just looks too plain freaky

[raj]

Wonderful review.  The local Toledo paper's review is in rhyme; gee how original, I wonder how many other reviewers got the same original idea to do a review of Dr. Suess in rhyme.

And why put  in sexual humor (really any humor) that isn't in the book.  I enjoy Cat in the Hat for its anarchic absurdity, it is as though Grazier was afraid that Suess himself wouldn't be enough.  Well he is.

[Velvet Brotha]

Yeah, I think it's sad how Mc Donald's gets away with slave driving their workers for minimal pay. I mean, they make billions of dollars feeding us their crap and polluting our landfills with worthless plastic junk (toys etc...)

It makes me sick to my stomach when I see all these endless commercials promoting a new kids movie. It think it drives parents nuckin' futs!

- Mario

[AndyC]

Sadly, this could be a terrible movie, but it will still make a huge profit because all of the kids, who don't know any better, will be sucked in by the advertising campaign, and will drag along their parents, who don't care enough to argue and can't be bothered introducing their kids to anything of quality. What the little ones want, they get.

[FearlessFreep]

What the little ones want, they get.

Not mine

[Flangepart]

Saw the comercial today.....
Oh, my God......
Its not a movie , it a two hour justification for more product placement and advertising!
Die, Hollywood,die!

[JohnL]

I like Jim Carey and I mostly like Mike Meyers, but this movie looks horrible. The review on ScreenIt's web site summed up the problems as the movie being like a pinball machine, bouncing all over the place, never slowing down, and Mike Meyers doing his usual routine and gags rather than trying to become the character. It said that it wasn't so much a story as justification for showing a series of unrelated set pieces.

[Kory]

It p**ses me off to NO END that they're destroying one of the best loved parts of my childhood movie\book experiences!  The sexual inuendo ALONE is enough to make me want to drive to hollywood and kick some ass!

I'm sick of Hollywood screwing with perfectly good things- they need to leave well enough alone and... drumroll... BE CREATIVE and come up with their own s**t.