THE ONLY prevailing dramatic tension in "Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat" is whether Mike Myers can save a humdrum movie with a cat mask on his face.
The answer is no. Occasionally, Myers adds some wicked little licks of his own to the film. He seems to be determined to push the movie's PG rating as close to PG-13 as possible. Unfortunately, he's up against a movie that's about as creatively inspired as a giant hairball and which tries to open up Dr. Seuss's minimalist bedside book with dull subplots and at least one politically correct underpinning.
Conrad (Spencer Breslin) and Sally (Dakota Fanning) take a ride in the S.L.O.W. (Super Luxurious Omnidirectional Whatchamajigger) with the title character (Mike Myers) in
(Melinda Sue Gordon -- Universal Studios And Dreamworks)
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The big question always hanging over the original 1957 bedsider was this: What are two kids doing home alone on a rainy day? So in the movie, Mom (Kelly Preston) scrambles to get a babysitter (Amy Hill), a couch potato who spends the movie asleep while the Cat does his crazy business. Guess the filmmakers were trying to reassure the Dr. Spock generation audience by removing all gratuitous parental tension.
The two kids, control freak Sally (Dakota Fanning) and authority bucker Conrad (Spencer Breslin), fight incessantly. But they become allies in fear when a giant cat (Myers) in a tall, striped hat enters the house and scares them to death. Eventually, he wins them over by promising a guilty pleasure of a good time creating mayhem in the house. The babysitter, Mrs. Kwan, snores through the whole thing suspended on a hanger in the closet -- this little touch the handiwork of the cat.
What follows is a rather mundane caper in which the cat causes household ruin with the help of his devilish imps, Thing One and Thing Two. And in an annoying subplot, Quinn (Alec Baldwin), a sleazy next-door neighbor who wants to marry the kids' mother and send little Conrad to military school, does his best to convince Mom that these brats are out of control.
Production designer-turned-director Bo Welch spends most of his energy, it seems, on the cartoony, off-kilter look of the neighborhood, the ickiness of the goop that messes up the house and a giant vortex that pulls everyone into a bigger, surrealistic world. But he's not so attentive when it comes to the human performances.
Preston is a bland mother. Baldwin gives a good college try with his one-dimensional villain, but that's about it. And at the risk of sounding churlish toward children, couldn't the filmmakers have found two more vigorous youngsters? Let's not leave scriptwriters Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer out of this. Although they come up with the occasionally ticklish one-liner, they're just making studio pablum for the masses, just as different screenwriters did for "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" Dr. Seuss would have demanded more.
Very young children, it should be said, probably won't have any problem with the movie. It's bright and perky on the surface. But for anyone mature enough to pay closer attention, it's going to fall short of expectations. Myers is the only reason to even hope for the movie. Alas, his antics are only sporadically amusing. There is one scene -- in which he plays two co-hosts of a cable television infomercial -- that is hilarious because of Myers's repartee and deft use of a northern English accent. But his biggest problem is that fuzzy face. Like Jim Carrey, who had to wear masks for "The Grinch" and "The Mask," Myers needs his whole face and body to work his gifts. Although you can see Myers's eyes and hear that distinctive voice (he seems to be imitating some of the characters from "The Wizard of Oz"), he's effectively muzzled. And that's a handicap you don't need in a losing race.
DR. SEUSS' THE CAT IN THE HAT (PG, 73 minutes) -- Contains risque humor and some slapstick pratfalls. Area theaters.
