What Went Wrong: The Cat in the Hat
By Shalimar Sahota
January 12, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
One rainy day, Sally (Dakota Fanning) and her brother Conrad (Spencer Breslin) are left at home after their mother, Joan Walden (Kelly Preston) is called in to work. She rings the babysitter, Mrs. Kwan (Amy Hill); only she falls asleep within minutes after watching TV. Bored and staring out the window, Sally and Conrad hear a noise upstairs. Upon investigating a cupboard they discover a giant human-like cat wearing a hat (Mike Myers). We’re not quite sure how The Cat has miraculously appeared in their house (or why), though when asked by Conrad where he came from, The Cat responds by saying that he drove from his place. The Cat then proceeds to mess their house up in the name of fun.
Directed by noted production designer Bo Welch, given his background it’s no surprise that the film’s sets stand out. The vibrant color scheme is certainly very enticing. The production designer was Alex McDowell, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Welch had more of a hand in this. It’s also most likely that this is where most of the $109 million production budget went.
Based on Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat, the film follows the basic story from the book and adds a few sub plots to lengthen what running time there is. While the film begins with rhyming narration, it doesn’t continue throughout. Welch decided to remove most of the rhymes from the book, feeling that rhymes on camera become “tedious.” Instead it seemed necessary to include some slightly lewd humor and double entendres that Dr. Seuss’ book was sorely lacking.
The film has three writers - Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer. Prior to The Cat in the Hat, the three of them had written episodes of Seinfeld. Apparently it was their uncredited work on How the Grinch Stole Christmas that got them the role of writing another live-action Dr. Seuss adaptation. As an example of their work, one of their completely left of field additions is a bizarre line about drunken clowns with hepatitis that probably got children asking, “Mommy? Daddy? What’s hepatitis?” I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what actually happened during some screenings of the film; though is it possible that maybe that’s exactly what Welch and the writers were intentionally aiming for?
It gets weirder when the house turns into an alternate world and The Cat, Conrad and Sally ride their Taiwanese babysitter (“We’re going to ride Mrs. Kwan?” says Sally) as if they were on a theme park ride. Plus, no adaptation of a Dr. Seuss classic would be complete without a cameo by Paris Hilton. That a sex tape involving Hilton, which made the news just a few weeks before the film opened, must have been wondrous for the film.
Then there is the character of The Cat himself. He laughs every couple of minutes, and constantly says, “Oh yeah!” I guess it’s Mike Myers’ PG friendly way of saying, “Yeah baby.” The Cat also steals a picture of Sally and Conrad’s mother and has the audience work out that the Super Hydraulic Instantaneous Transporter can be abbreviated. That he is lactose intolerant is only written in so that the film can include a scene where he belches. He’s like an annoyingly unlikeable acquaintance that thinks he’s amazing, but you actually want to kill him. Nevertheless, it is mildly enjoyable seeing a group of children hitting The Cat with baseball bats.
Take out the end credits and the film is insanely short at just 75 minutes long, which is kind of a blessing, really. After noticing a few awkward continuity errors, I imagine a longer version did exist, for the DVD release contains 16 deleted scenes.
The film opened in the US on November 21, 2003 and earned a reasonable $38.3 million during its opening weekend to reach #1. However, it wasn’t exactly as high as the previous Dr. Seuss adaptation, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which opened to $55.1 million back in 2000. The following week it was predicted to fall off the top spot after bad reviews and early estimates put Disney’s The Haunted Mansion on top. Amazingly The Cat in the Hat was #1 for a second week with a take of $24.4 million.
Universal appeared to be doing okay with their unanimously derided film in the #1 spot for two weeks. It wasn’t to last. A 70% decline in week three had the film fall to #5. It finished its run in the US with a take of $101 million. A further $32 million overseas brought its total earnings to $133 million overall, making for a relatively slim profit.
Completely destroyed by the critics, almost all of them cited the questionable material in a family film. That it was aimed towards children meant that parents would have taken their little ones to go see it on its opening weekend, regardless of how bad the reviews were. Almost all of the reviews say that this is not Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat, though it is quite strange reading the minority of positive reviews that exist, saying the same thing, yet they seemed to like the film because of that. Children don’t write reviews and it’s quite possible that some of them actually like this kind of thing. Then again, one positive review notes that the film is not for little ones, because in the screening they attended the children were looking around with confused faces.
The film was nominated for eight Razzie Awards, and ended up winning one - the Worst Excuse For An Actual Movie. Following his sole directorial effort, Welch didn’t work on a film again till 2008, back as a production designer on Space Chimps. He has most recently worked with Barry Sonnenfeld on Men in Black III.
Because of The Cat in the Hat, there will be no more live action Dr. Seuss movies in the future. Audrey Geisel, widow of Dr. Seuss, and president of Dr. Seuss Enterprises, was not impressed with the film and did not approve of Myers in the role of The Cat. She refuses to allow any of Dr. Seuss characters to be portrayed in live action again and has subsequently kept a watchful eye on the latest adaptations, serving as executive producer on Horton Hears a Who! and The Lorax.
There are some clever moments of blatant cross promotion during the final act, as The Cat advertises Universal Studios and mentions the "importance" of including “an up tempo pop tune for the soundtrack.” However, these moments also highlight what a beloved children’s story has gone through for its big screen adaptation. It’s more about getting the audience to part with their cash through one avenue or another rather than preserving what people loved about the original story. At the time, it was reported by the Washington Post that The Cat in the Hat was “one of the largest business backed films in Hollywood,” with 75 companies producing related products to tie-in with the film.
Coming across as the kind of insensitivity that’s been tailor made towards the lowest common denominator, The Cat in the Hat distorts the Dr. Seuss book, as well as the character of The Cat. It doesn’t seem to make any sense that someone out there thought the addition of crude jokes was the right way to honor Dr. Seuss. Still, if that’s what Welch and Universal wanted, then maybe they should have just gone all the way and turned it into an R-rated comedy re-titled Fear of a Black Cat.