Film I wouldn't watch it here or there, I wouldn't watch it anywhere.
You know how everyone complains when an adaptation of something they like is made, and it sucks? They should really take comfort in knowing that no matter how bad it gets, it will never be as bad as The Cat in the Hat.
It's bad enough that it's an attempt to pad a 9 or 10 minute book into an hour and a half long film, meaning there's meaningless, padding everywhere, leaving the movie completely without any sort of plot, but this isn't a movie for kids. It's not.
This movie, based on the clean, wholesome work of the child friendly Dr. Seuss, is filled to the brim with nothing but grossout jokes and crass adult humor, and does it in such a way that not even the parents would find it funny. Mike Meyers is basically Austin Powers in a fursuit making the same kinds of jokes he made in those movies.
I understand that when you're making a movie for the kids, you need to sneak in some jokes that only the parents will get. The problem with this is that there is NOTHING BUT adult humor and the only kid-centric jokes are all toilet gags. The Cat has a Curse Cut Short at least three times, and this is supposed to be a DR. SEUSS movie.
Not even The Grinch, which really wasn't that bad with this, and was actually able to make the padding and adult humor work for it.
Film Not great but not that bad
Okay, I will concede right off the bat that The Cat in the Hat was better in every conceivable respect. And while I don’t hate this movie, I can’t really say “at least it was a good film” the way I can with How the Grinch Stole Christmas!. It’s too weird, incoherent and unfocused, is far too reliant on adult humour and often pushes Cat into Nominal Hero territory. And it’s not as if it were true to the book either. Are there good things about it? Yes. Some of the jokes are pretty funny (even if they rely heavily on Getting Crap Past the Radar) and Conrad and Sally have good Character Development and even though he’s a lot better in Shrek, Myers does a good job in delivering the absolute madness that leads to the kids not trusting him in The Cat in the Hat is Back.
Really, the best thing I can say about this is that even though it doesn’t work well as a Cat in the Hat movie it’s decent if you think of it as an Affectionate Parody of the Cat in the Hat (though admittedly The Simpsons did that better.
So it’s not great or anything but it’s still not as bad as say The Nostalgia Critic says (even if his video on it were indeed funny which to be fair it was.)
It’s not as bad as people think.