Dr Seuss' The Cat in the Hat (2003)

Director

• Bo Welch

Starring

• Mike Myers
• Alec Baldwin
• Kelly Preston
• Dakota Fanning
• Spencer Breslin

Last On

12:30-14:05 Sat 24th Mar 2018 75m
E4

Synopsis

Dr Seuss's much-loved children's book gets turned into ineffective big-screen mush in this colourful but lifeless adaptation. Learning no lessons from Ron Howard's delightful The Grinch, production designer-turned-director Bo Welch makes scant use of Seuss's wonderful rhymes and pacing, instead delivering a horribly self-aware vehicle for Mike Myers's ego. There's little magic or charm here as youngsters Dakota Fanning and Spencer Breslin find a rainy day at home lifted by the mysterious appearance of a giant talking feline. Though the kids are great and the CGI fish hugely entertaining, Myers's fun-obsessed Cat is just plain annoying - his performance merely an amalgamation of every other comic character he's ever played. Consequently, no matter how hard debut director Welch tries with the imaginative visuals, most scenes fall flat when Myers is on screen. The creation of a romantic subplot to flesh out the original story, featuring Kelly Preston and a grotesque Alec Baldwin, is jarring and unnecessary too. A wasted opportunity.