Ok- apparently The Cat In the Hat is REALLY BAD

[NYYFan]

Has anyone seen it or planning on seeing it ?
All reviews I have heard have convinced me to go to matinee if not wait for a $2 viewing.

[Aristus]

1. I sure hope so. If it falls throught the cellarhole

maybe no one else will make full-length Dr. Seuss movies anymore.

Sorry, Dr. Seuss purist here.

[NYYFan]

3. I'm with you, that's what made me refuse to see "The Grinch"

apparently, taking small kids to see it is a bad idea. :wtf: it's supposed to be a Dr. Seuss book !! :shrug:

[FunBobbyMucha]

24. A dog's anus?!?

I was forced to finally see The Grinch movie per my old job. I had boycotted because I knew what they would do with it, and I cherished the Chuck Jones cartoon of my childhood. There's the inherent problem with making these things in 3D--you have to pad out a simple, sublime little fable into a 2 hour movie.

At any rate, midway thru the excretable film, Carrey turns his dog Max around, tail lifted, so that a dreaming Hank Kingsley can kiss the dog's anus! WTF?!?!?!?

Incredulously, I just read Ron Howard's years-later assessment of that film, and he said Carrey deserved an Oscar!

JeesuzChristonnacracker!

[VelmaD]

4. From your lips...

to the universe's ear. Why do they do it? The Grinch SUCKED ASS! It wasn't worthy of the cartoon original. And now they're going to ruin this book too. *sigh*

[mac56]

7. I agree, VelmaD.

"The Grinch" was unbelievably bad. They took so many liberties with it in order to pad it out to 90 minutes and accommodate Jim Carrey. This is precisely why I don't plan to see The Cat.

[wtmusic]

10. Favorite Seuss rhyme? Mine is

"And here is an act of enormous enormance!
No other performer's performed this performance!"

From "If I Ran the Circus"

[Richardo]

2. I'm waiting for the live action version of "Go Dog Go"

...and I'm not even going to THINK of "Hop on Pop" (Vivid Video?)

This live action, smarmy, smirking adultification of childrens books trend must stop.

So saith Richardo.

[mac56]

9. Did you know there is a stage musical version of "Go Dog Go"?

Amazing.

[Richardo]

33. As Richardo's Dad would say:

"Oh brother." :eyes:

[BiggJawn]

16. Wouldn't TLA Video have "Hop on Pop"?

Sometimes, I wonder if I know too much about Gay erotica for my own good......

[Richardo]

34. I'm somewhat gratified to say I did not know the production house for gay

erotica was TLA. I'm embarrassed enough that I know "Vivid Video" :-)

[Superfly]

5. Check out

Rotten Tomatoes

They only give it an 11% good rating.

[NYYFan]

6. OUCH !!

no band-aid will stop this bleeding it seems

[starroute]

25. Reviewers reaching for superlatives to say how awful it is

I can't recall ever seeing a worse set of reviews. Just skimming down the quotes at Rotten Tomatoes, I come up with:

"Heinous."

"cruelly abrasive"

"avoid this film like the plague"

"the ultimate bad day at Disney World"

"Just plain awful."

"disastrously misconceived"

"ugly, dumb and colossally mean-spirited"

"Disaster, disaster, disaster. Disaster."

"It shows not only a complete disregard for children, but also utter contempt."

"I began wondering if the producers set out to torture their family audience."

"Comes scarily close to being the most unendurable Hollywood creation of the last dozen years."

"Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat is perhaps the worst holiday movie ever made."

[regnaD kciN]

35. And, of course...

...there are the reviews written in Seuss-style verse:

"It's not worth your money. Not even one look.
Mike Myers has butchered a great children's book."


"We would not like him in our flat.
We'd like to hit him with a bat.
We do not like Mike Myers' Cat."


"It pains me to tell you,
But really, it's true:
The Cat in the Hat
Is a piece of dog doo.

Not the book, you silly,
That's the cat's meow,
But Mike Myers' movie
Is a feline bow-wow.

Shades of pistachio
Avocado and lime
Had me feeling green -
What a terrible time!

The stars did not shine,
The sun was not sunny,
This movie's a snooze -
Do not waste your money!"


"Why oh why did they make it like that,
oh why did they ruin 'The Cat in the Hat'?

A sweet silly story with a girl and a boy,
the book was created for wordplay and joy.

The artist behind it was a Geisel called Seuss,
a genius cartoonist and baby-boom Mother Goose.

The movie takes place in a bright-colored town,
a twee little burg unblighted by frowns.

The girl and the boy are quiet as slugs,
when along comes a Cat dressed up in a rug.

The Cat is played by the comic Mike Myers,
a zany Canuck whom I tend to admire.

Myers shambles in like the Cowardly Lion,
but Bert Lahr never stooped to a studio tie-in.

Soon a tale of daydreaming tots,
becomes a fiasco riddled with rot.

No one in Hollywood likes humor that's clean,
so the jokes in this film are lowdown and mean.

When the Cat sees a mom who's hotter than Hades,
his hat swells up to the size of a Mercedes.

A joke about poop is ever so limp,
and the gag with the hoe is fit for a pimp.

It is fun to have fun with the MPAA,
but dirty is dirty and that's all that I'll say.

Thing One and Thing Two are creepy and crude,
they look like the critters from Cronenberg's brood.

When these Things run amok like a couple of ids,
there's simply no saving these home-alone kids.

As their bodacious mom who's too hot for the room,
Kelly Preston radiates va-va-va-voom.

Unlucky for her there's a guy named Quinn,
a bachelor type who really wants in.

Quinn is played by the Baldwin called Alec,
an actor whose presence is decidedly phallic.

Quinn eyeballs the mom with a notion to bed,
without him onboard the film would be dead.

If directing bad movies were a sin to confess,
Bo Welch would say oops for making this mess.

Critics are paid to suffer bad art,
no matter how icky it is from the start.

So all we could do was to
Sit!
Sit!
Sit!
Sit!

And we did not like it.
Not one little bit.'"

I don't think I've ever seen reviews this savage...not even for Heaven's Gate, Ishtar, or The Postman.

[Emboldened Chimp]

26. At least it's better than Battlefield Earth

that got 5%, I think.

[wtmusic]

8. Mike Myers looks like a woman

BAD costume

[BiggJawn]

17. That costume SOOOOO does NOT work!

It unsettles even me...Just something not right about it. It looks like eyes and a mouth on a blank white screen. No other features...

[supernova]

11. Why do the producers of these things

think its a good idea to put actors in HEAVY makeup to replicate the Dr Seuss books?

If I wanted to do a Dr Seuss movie, I would rely more on story and and the poetry rather than just making an obvious duplicate of the books.

The poetry is what Dr Seuss is all about, that and contemplating big questions with little ones. The people making these movies seem to forget that.

[Enraged_Ape]

13. And let's not forget Geisel's illustrations

His cartoons were priceless. You can't make up actors or use props or set design to even approach what he did. He was one of a kind.

[Bertha Venation]

12. IF I were to see it, I'd only see it for the fish

(I like fish) but I won't even rent the DVD that'll be out next week. The image of Dr. Seuss's "The Cat In The Hat" displaying the immature libido of a human male junior high schooler made me want to vomit. Who thinks up this insipid bullshit trash?

[Goldenboy]

27. Can Sean Hayes save this?

Yeah, the fish is played by Sean Hayes (who also has another role as mom's tyrannical boss).

To answer the question, Hayes is pretty funny but unfortunately, his talent as well as Myers' is wasted in this. And whoever said that the lyrical rhymes that was part of the charm of Dr. Seuss is right...it's not easily translated to the big screen.

[MissMillie]

14. Boston Globe says:

The producers of the horrible new "Cat in the Hat" movie could not have desecrated Dr. Seuss any more if they had dug up Ted Geisel's body and hung it from a tree, writes the Globe's Ty Burr. Ouch!

[Fenris]

15. Mike Myers has one comedic character

And unfortunately, he plays it in every comedy he's in. And I love the Austin Powers movie. The second one was a rehash of the first. And the third should be commended for making fun of Dutch people. But he really has one character that morphs into different forms depending on the script.

Don't fuck with Suess. Maybe they should make a live action version of "Dr. Suess Goes to War."

[Tracer]

18. And another quote from Ty Burr (Globe)

"Who's to blame? Let's name names. Besides Myers, there's director Bo Welch and his three-man writing team, all of whom seem to feel that children should be introduce to smutty puns as early as possible."

Let it sink like a stone.

[Emboldened Chimp]

19. A.O. Scott at the NY Times says...

First-time director Bo Welch has put together a vulgar, uninspired lump of poisoned eye candy that Universal has the temerity to call "Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat."

(snip)

I am tempted to say that this Cat should be tied up in a sack and drowned, but I wouldn't want to condone cruelty to animals, even metaphorically. Cruelty to classic works of children's literature is bad enough.

Neutering, to prevent this beast from spawning sequels, is perhaps the most humane solution. Or maybe it is best to follow the advice of that wise fish: "Make that cat go away! Tell that cat in the hat you do not want to play."

Ouch!

[Melsky]

20. What is up with the post office promoting it?

They are doing a joint marketing campaign, with big posters at the post office and a cat in the hat postmark. I hope our tax dollars are not paying for this crap.

[CanuckAmok]

23. Just the opposite...

The PO gets paid to promote it.

[Sequoia]

21. Looks stupid to me

too. At any rate, I like to read "Fox in Socks" out loud. It's a real tounge twister.

[ironflange]

22. Here's what's going on

Roger Ebert says in his review that the same guy who produced The Grinch also did The Cat. Enough said.

[LynneSin]

28. "If the producers had dug up Ted Geisel's body and hung it from a tree"

http://www.imdb.com/StudioBrief/#1

......they couldn't have desecrated the man more." More specifically, Mark Caro writes in the Chicago Tribune: "Can we agree on one point? You shouldn't have to add burps, farts and dog pee to Dr. Seuss."

That's a pretty harsh review

YIKES!!!

[NYYFan]

30. Any reaction from Camp Geisel ?

:shrug:

I wonder what the Geisel family thinks about this film. Did they like the Grinch ?

[jayfish]

29. OMG!!

I made the mistake of taking my son(3) grocery shopping the other night and it was everywhere. I could have sworn I saw the (movie) cats ugly mug plastered on a box of nicorette. It was maddening. of course my son had to have it ALL!

Jay

[Plaid Adder]

31. There's no way that movie could not suck.

Why do people have to do that to Dr. Seuss? Why?

The animated Grinch TV special is wonderful. Why did they have to make that long, nasty, sucky live-action Jim Carrey thing? And I think there is an animated Cat in the Hat out there too--so what the hell is THIS? The posters make the Cat look really mean-spirited and no fun, which maybe has something to do with how Myers feels abotu the makeup. And what about the goldfish?

Run away,

The Plaid Adder

[geniph]

32. I learned to read from that book

I worship Ted Geisel's memory. I still read Dr. Seuss - aloud - every year when our school district has their Dr. Seuss week. I will not go to see these movies; I don't see what on earth they could add that would be an improvement on these books, which verge on holy writ for me.

This has to stop. It's one thing to make movies from Disneyland attractions, but Dr. Seuss should not be for sale. Leave the books alone; they're perfect as they are.

When I was 2 and a half, I tried to get my mother to read The Cat In The Hat to me for the ten thousandth time. Being an impatient person, she said, "you ought to be able to read that yourself by now" and went on with whatever she was doing. Sulkily, I sat down to look at the pictures, and having memorized the book some time ago, was saying the words to myself, when my brain made some sort of connection. I still remember the feeling of amazement when I realized, THAT'S what those black marks are! and from then on I could read. It set me free.

Rest in peace, Mr. Geisel.