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This will go into a few spoilers, so if you haven’t seen The Cat in the Hat, then understand that many critics sacrificed 80 minutes of their lives to watch this film, so you wouldn’t have to.

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.

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