Feline Groovy
The Cat in the Hat might be the funniest film of the century.
“You’re not just wrong, you’re stupid. And you’re ugly, just like your mum.”
Whenever someone insults The Cat in the Hat, the Bo Welch-directed 2003 adaptation of the classic Dr. Seuss book, in my presence, I respond with that quote (occasionally in GIF form). It is, of course, a quote from the film. A film aimed ostensibly at young children.
Everyone has a film they adored as an adolescent and still enjoy through the mindframe of their dumb, teenage self (possibly with the aid of drink or drugs): for 90s kids, it’s likely Bill & Ted or the South Park movie, or maybe Wayne’s World. The Big Lebowski would be another example, but that’s just an all-round great film. There remains a strong bias in cultural media against children of my generation — those of us born after Wayne’s World was released. And our cult classics, our childhood favourites: they’re rarely acknowledged as the ‘alt-masterpieces’ they truly are. The Incredibles and Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol are better films than their generational counterparts The Goonies and Die Hard, but you’ll never read that in a magazine! As far as I’m concerned (though I’ll admit right now that many of my Gen Z peers are not fans of The Cat in the Hat — largely because they’re stoopid), Welch’s film trumps everything star Mike Myers, and his contemporaries Jim Carrey and Eddie Murphy, made before it. It is a masterclass in surrealism, in slapstick, in double entendres and in comedic longevity: a perfect 78 minutes, and one of my favourite comedies of all time.
Most people I know who dislike the film use the justification of “It frightened/confused me as a child”. I find this absurd — I loved the film as a child, for different (more innocent) reasons than I do now. I’ll admit that The Cat in the Hat is certainly an unorthodox adaptation of Seuss — one might argue the author would scratch his own eyes out if he saw it. His family hated it so much, they prohibited any further live-action adaptations of his work. But isn’t that merely evidence of its subversiveness? (And Dr. Seuss was hardly perfect — he actually produced some pretty racist material). This is a film which dresses one of the world’s biggest comedy stars as a furry cat who gets an erection with his tail, launders money from children and is undoubtedly indulging in some psychotropic substances. We shouldn’t hold that against it.
It is, on one level, a kids’ version of American Beauty: Conrad and Sally are two mindlessly-bored children stuck in a grimly flawless suburban estate. The adult woman (their mom — Kelly Preston) in the house is a hysterical realtor with no time for family. They seek refuge in a secret life with a mysterious stranger. It’s all accompanied by melancholy music composed by a Newman brother. I rest my case. It’s also just a damn hilarious film from minute one: opening at the Humberfloob company, where Mom works; her boss Sean Hayes, a man so obsessed with hygiene that he sprays his hands with disinfectant approximately every 10 seconds. Everything on screen is either bright green or bright pink — Alec Baldwin (who I’ll get to momentarily) took a moment in his recent autobiography to praise the extraordinary detail of the film’s design. It’s no surprise — Bo Welch (husband of Catherine O’Hara) is an acclaimed production designer who worked on Beetlejuice and Men in Black. For 2003, the visual effects in The Cat in the Hat are actually pretty impressive: it looks as expensive as it was, though it’s a visual palette that one wouldn’t subject Sartre to. As a matter of fact, there’s a lot of prestige behind the camera: the director of photography is Emmanuel Lubezki of Birdman and The Revenant fame; the script was co-written by Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm vets David Mandel and Alec Berg. This film is much funnier than anything on Seinfeld.
Alec Baldwin, as I mentioned, is also in this movie. And he’s bloody amazing in it. He plays LARRY, Mom’s assclown boyfriend who wants to send young Conrad to military school, but tolerates Sally because they share tooth-whitening strips. He wears purple suits, gets his TV repossessed, reveals a large hairy stomach under his shirt and yells “You whizzed on my taco!” at a dog. And, at the end, he gets covered in purple slime. Baldwin probably did the gig for money, but let’s pretend he went Full Method on it. It’s arguably the role of his career.
The two children don’t let the adults down: Dakota Fanning is better than ever as uptight Sally, who puts “Be Spontaneous” at the top of her to-do list. Spencer Breslin is a revelation as Conrad: introduced to us throwing himself down the stairs with a bag of bread stuffed down his pants. I’m laughing just thinking about it. He gets to shout a lot, and make evil eyes at Alec Baldwin. 14 years on, his performance really holds up.
Preston and Hayes (who also voices the hypochondriac fish) handle their material well, but the real star of the supporting cast is Amy Hill as Mrs. Kwan. Mrs. Kwan is a heavyset Taiwanese babysitter who watches violent parliamentary footage from her homeland until she falls asleep and The Cat hangs her sleeping body in a wardrobe (like something out of a Fincher thriller). Mrs. Kwan’s enlarged face in the front door’s peephole is one of the few still images that, when presented in front of me, makes me laugh hysterically for several minutes straight. It’s the best frame of film Lubezki has ever shot. I’ve never asked a Taiwanese person if they feel Mrs. Kwan is a racist stereotype: I wouldn’t be surprised if they said yes, so I apologise if that’s the case.
But, of course, this is Mike Myers’ movie. He’s never been better, and he never will be again. He rocks that cat suit, which presumably was the the single most uncomfortable costume of all time. He gets a musical number “Fun Fun Fun!” and a bunch of random comedy interludes — arguably the highlight of the film. In my favourite, the cat acts as two presenters of a cooking programme. And yes, it includes the line “You’re not just wrong, you’re stupid. And you’re ugly, just like your mum”. The film is proud of its chaos; it indulges in it.
This is a rare film where the deleted scenes on the DVD are just as good as the actual content of the feature: there are 15 minutes of cut material, all hilarious, including an extended vignette in a TV store, where The Cat impersonates a carpet and is jumped on with a Pogo stick, and Thing 1 and 2’s flooding of a road.
Obviously, part of my gleeful enthusiasm for this film is rooted in everybody else’s disdain for it. My friend Killian (who recorded an audio commentary with me in 2015) and I are the only people I’ve ever heard express true affection for The Cat in the Hat, which makes it Our Special Film. And what a special film it is. It marks the sad end to an era of PG-Rated Family Comedies That Aren’t Really Kid-Friendly, films like The Mask and Space Jam. They don’t bake ’em like The Cat in the Hat any more. Which is probably a good thing for our children’s sake.
