The Cat in the Hat (2003)
Directed by Bo Welch
During a rainy day, and while their mother is out, Conrad and Sally, and their pet fish, are visited by the mischievous Cat in the Hat. Fun soon turns to mayhem, and the siblings must figure out how to rid themselves of the maniacal Cat.
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What critics compared The Cat in the Hat to
The Grinch is such an uninvolving bore that it made me long for the wacky weirdness of 2003’s The Cat in the Hat .
Yet taken on its own terms (i.e., pretend that you’ve never encountered this story before, as countless children who see this movie won’t have), “The Grinch” is a buoyant and agreeable entertainment, with a lead vocal performance, by Benedict Cumberbatch, that doesn’t try to bend the story, the way Carrey’s performance did (or Mike Myers’ in the 2003 live-action “The Cat in the Hat”), toward some misbegotten goal of hellzapoppin’ dump-truck anarchy.
It neither detracts from Dr. Seuss’ legacy (remember “The Cat in the Hat” ?) nor enhances it, being instead a serviceable expansion of a simple, redemptive story that didn’t need to be expanded but isn’t necessarily damaged by it.
To an extent, and to Finnergan’s credit, the creepy and atmospheric tension works a number on the senses (you’ll never forget the conga line of identical houses that look recycled from the live action remake of “The Cat in the Hat”) however, the script could try harder to embrace its campiness.
David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer (all of whom, save Cohen, are, ironically, credited scribes on Mike Myers’ The Cat in the Hat), is excellent at creating funny situations and then ramping up the absurdity with each successive beat, as when Aladeen and his top nuclear scientist board a New York helicopter tour hoping to blend in, and wind up accidentally saying about as many terrorist buzzwords as possible; it’s not unlike Basil Fawlty failing to not mention the war to Germans .
This sounds like a line and a narrative from a Dr. Seuss book, something akin to the pesky feline visitor from The Cat in the Hat.