MOVIE REVIEW

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

By Manohla Dargis, Times Staff Writer

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."

* * *
With apologies to Theodor Geisel.

'The Cat in the Hat'

MPAA rating: PG, for mild crude humor and some double-entendres

Times guidelines: Jokes about feces, prostitutes, erections

Mike Myers ... The Cat
Alec Baldwin ... Quinn
Kelly Preston ... Mom
Dakota Fanning ... Sally
Spencer Breslin ... Conrad

Universal Pictures/DreamWorks Pictures/Imagine Entertainment present a Brian Grazer Production, released by Universal Pictures. Director Bo Welch. Writers Alec Berg, David Mandel, Jeff Schaffer. Based on the book by Dr. Seuss. Producer Brian Grazer. Director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki. Production designer Alex McDowell. Editor Don Zimmerman. Costume designer Rita Ryack. Running time: 1 hour, 22 minutes.

In general release.