The magical, literally and figuratively twisted world of Dr. Seuss comes to life in Mike Myers' The Cat In The Hat, but in trying to appeal to both adults and kids, that world's firmament gets stretched too thin.
It's a tricky thing, to get that balance right. It's almost as tricky as the balance director Bo Welch tries to strike between our existence and the bizarre alternate world where Cat, Thing 1, Thing 2 and who knows what other creatures live. For children—and after all, this is a movie for children—Welch and Myers are successful. Myers imbues Cat with a wild zaniness, a complete disregard for all rules in the face of having fun. And Welch, along with art directors Alec Hammond and Sean Haworth, get every detail right, from the vibrant colors of a real-estate office to the drooping foliage from the impossibly tall trees in people's front yards.
Welch quickly sets up the movie's plot. Dakota Fanning, in a reprisal of her role in Uptown Girls, and a wooden Spencer Breslin (The Santa Claus 2) play the uptight Sally and disobedient Conrad, children of single-mom Joan (Kelly Preston). While Joan struggles to get her house in order for an important party with her anally retentive boss Sean Hayes (Jack on TV's Will and Grace), she has to contend with her kids and the amorous attentions of neighbor Quinn (Alec Baldwin).
Mom is called back to the office, and before the baby sitter has breathed her first snore, the Cat suddenly appears from nowhere. Sally's hesitation and the Fish's admonitions (Hayes, again) are quickly put to rest or ignored and the rest of the film's 82-minute running time is left as a blank slate for Myers to work his magic.
As the Cat teaches the kids the ethos of anarchy, a Pandora's box of sorts is introduced. The box, from which Thing 1 and Thing 2 spring, is actually a gateway to the Cat's dimension. Naturally, Conrad is warned not to unlock it, and naturally Conrad does. Soon, the race is on to stop the Things from destroying the house and get the box securely sealed again before Quinn can tell Joan of the damage and get Conrad sent off to military school.
Much, if not all, of the wonderful look of the film can be credited to Welch, in his feature film directorial debut. Before this movie, Welch earned Academy Award nominations for his work as production designer on Men in Black, The Birdcage and A Little Princess. He also won an award for his work on Edward Scissorhands.
Unlike Dr. Seuss, Myers never seems to clearly know who his audience is. The humor ranges from slapstick that had the children in the theater screaming in delight to scatological jokes which had parents gasping in surprise and likely wondering if they needed to clap hands over young ears. When The Cat In The Hat works, it works amazingly well. You forget you're watching a Canadian comic under 3 pounds of makeup and hair and buy right into the world of Anville. But then Myers mugs into the camera one too many times, or reaches to make an off-color joke, and it vanishes.