The Cat in the Hat

***The Cat in the Hat*** is a 2003 traditionally-animated fantasy comedy film produced by Amblimation and DreamWorks Animation and directed by Mark Dindal. Loosely based on the book of the same name by Dr. Seuss, it was the second feature-length animated Dr. Seuss adaptation by Amblimation after the 2000 holiday comedy film, *How the Grinch Stole Christmas*. The film is narrated by Victor Brandt and stars the voices of Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Dakota Fanning, Alec Baldwin, Kelly Preston and Sean Hayes.

Production on the film began in 1997 with Tim Allen initially cast as the voice of the Cat, but he dropped his role due to work on *The Santa Clause 2*. In 2002, Mike Myers was originally cast, but he refused due to casting issues, and the role was later given to Williams. While the basic plot parallels that of the book, the film filled out its 82 minutes by adding new subplots and characters significantly different from the original story. David Newman composed the film's score.

Released on November 21, 2003 in the United States, the film received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics who praised its story, animation, humor, Williams' portrayal of the title character, and Newman's musical score but criticized its lack of faithfulness to Dr. Seuss' original story. The film became a box-office success, grossing $233 million worldwide against its $109 million budget and is warmly received by audiences.

## Plot

When single mother Joan Walden is called back to work, she hires a babysitter to watch her daughter Sally, who is constantly doing the exact opposite of what she is supposed to do and accidentally causing trouble, sometimes being bossy and trying to be perfect. Their next door neighbor, Larry Quinn dreams of marrying Joan and sending Sally away to a military school to straighten up her behavior.

When Joan leaves, Sally's babysitter, Mrs. Kwan, falls asleep. Not long after, it starts to rain outside and Sally gets bored. She then hears somewhere in the house, and as she go investigate, a human-sized cat named the Cat in the Hat appears. The Cat reveals he wants her to learn to have fun, but Sally's pet fish tries to convince the Cat not to be around when Joan is away. The Cat convinces Sally to sign a contract which will allow her to have all the fun she wants, and will stop anything bad happening. When Sally is suggests to cook cupcakes, the Cat spawns invites a host version of himself, who puts on a cooking show (with Sally and other animals as audience members) to present the Kupkake-inator. When the Cat accidentally chops off his tail, the Cat then bandages his wounded tail. Eventually, they make cupcakes out of everything in the kitchen, but the cupcakes explode, causing a large, purple gooey mess. The Cat tries to clean up the mess with Joan's dress, much to the horror of Sally. The Cat then brings in a large red crate, opens it, and releases two screwball creatures named Thing 1 and Thing 2. Sally is eager to open the crate again, but the Cat explains her that the crate is a transport to his own world, known as the Trans-dimensional Transportolator, and he warns her not to open it; he then locks the crate.

As Thing 1 and Thing 2 proceed to wreck the house, Sally goes against the Cat's rules and sneakily opens the crate. The lock ends up on the collar of her dog, Nevins. Thing 1 and Thing 2 then throw Nevins out the window, just when Sally catches them in a net. Sally fusses over the state of the house, but The Cat warns her that they have more important things to worry about: if they do not put the lock back on the crate, they will be in the middle of "the mother of all messes". The duo puts the babysitter on the crate to buy some time and chase after Nevins. Meanwhile, Larry is revealed to be a rude, disgusting, smelly (with poor personal hygiene), unemployed slob who is too lazy to work for a living, and the only reason he wishes to marry Joan is for all of her money. He sees Nevins running through the street and seizes the opportunity to try to frame Sally for being unable to take care of Nevins, just as the TV he is watching is being repossessed by a trio of Repo men, for not paying it since it was overdue and his credit card has expired.

They end up at an birthday party Sally wasn't invited to; while Cat disguises himself as a pinata (which look like him) at the birthday party, kids hit him with plastic bats, and then a bigger kid with a big wooden bat orders them to move out of his way. Sally predicts that it can't end well and the Cat frantically raises a white flag but the boy stands behind him and slams the Cat hard with the bat which cause him to fly away and land into the bush where Sally is hiding. Sally then breaks the pinata causing the candies to fall out and the duo scurries away before the kids looks inside the bushes and happily grab candies.

Larry grabs Nevins and heads for Joan's office. Sally and the Cat catch up to Larry in a vehicle called the Super Luxurious Omnidirectional Whatchamajigger (SLOW), formerly known as the Furious Automobile of Speedajiggy Transporter (FAST), which ends up being destroyed in a crash as they get there. The Cat then tricks him into handing over Nevins and the crab lock by making him sign a petition with a large, oversized pen that requires two hands. Having lost Nevins, Larry goes to Joan and tells her about Sally's behavior. Remembering that the Things always do the opposite of whatever they are told, Sally is able to get them to help them get home, and stall Joan and Larry, by telling them not to do either. While the Things, posing as police officers, distract Joan and Larry, the duo get back home, unaware that the babysitter has fallen off the crate to answer a phone call from Joan and that all terror is breaking loose as the crate erupts. An obsessed Larry decides to run to the house and tells Joan to meet him there. When Larry catches Sally at the doorway and takes her to the house, the Cat reappears. Larry stumbles backwards while sneezing (due to being allergic to cats), only to fall from a high cliff into the Cat's world.

Sally is surprised at what has become of the house, being the "mother of all messes", just as the Cat had warned before. They finally find the crate after passing through the Cat's world. They successfully close it, and the house returns to normal, but then suddenly collapses. Sally berates the Cat for not fixing things, despite the fact that he was not responsible for the mess. He admits that he planned the entire day (excluding cutting his tail off and Nevins' dognapping) and he even knew Sally would open the crate, so Sally orders him to leave. Dismayed, he states that he thought she wanted to have fun and Sally angrily tells him that he doesn't know when enough is enough. The Cat then sadly leaves. Sally prepares to face the consequences when Joan comes home, but just when it looked like this was the end of the road, much to her surprise, the Cat comes back with Thing 1 and Thing 2 and a cleaning machine called the Dynamic Industrial Renovating Tractormajigger (DIRT). He explains that, when Sally opened the crate, the contract was rendered null and void, thus explaining why bad things happened contrary to prior agreement. However, he then explains that it would be reinstated if Sally learned from her mistakes.

They clean up the mess, and the house is clean and put back together, much to the relief of Sally, who then thanks the Cat for everything. The Cat and the Things then leave the house, just in time for Joan to come home. Mrs. Kwan wakes up and tells Joan that Sally was a "angel", as she doesn't know anything about what happened since she was sound asleep the whole time. But then Larry barges in, covered from head to toe in purple goo and starts telling Joan about the mess and the Cat's world, and then begins to antagonize Sally, but Joan states that even though Sally is quite a trouble maker, she isn't a bad kid. Not believing Larry (as the Cat already cleaned the house before her arrival), Joan declines his proposal of marriage and instead sends him away for his actions. The party goes as scheduled; Joan carries a tray of purple cupcakes, and Sally tells her, "You can make cupcakes out of anything." The film then ends with a shot of the Cat and the Things walking away on the street in the sunset and they were thinking of going on vacation to Hawaii.

### Casting

Tim Allen was originally planned to voice the Cat. The script would be originally based on a story conceived by Allen, who admitted that as a child he was afraid of Seuss' "mischievous feline" babysitter. Allen stated, "My dream is to give it the edge that scared me." However, producers did not commission a screenplay until late February 2001, when Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer, and Dave Mandel (who were also writers on *Seinfeld*) were hired to write the script (replacing the original draft of the film that was written a few years before penned by Eric Roth), so the film would not be ready to animate before the deadline. Allen was also committed to shooting Disney's *The Santa Clause 2*, which was also delayed because Allen wanted a script rewrite. Due to a scheduling conflict with that film, he dropped out his role. In March 2002, the voice role of the Cat was originally given to Mike Myers, but he refused due to casting issues, even though he was a long-time fan of the original Dr. Seuss book, and that it was the first book he ever read. In April 2002 during the interview, Robin Williams was interested in the film, so he has been given for the voice of the Cat.

## Release

### Box office

*The Cat in the Hat* opened theatrically on November 21, 2003 and earned $38,329,160 in its opening weekend, ranking first in the North American box office. The film ended its theatrical run on March 18, 2004, having grossed $101,149,285 domestically and $32,811,256 overseas for a worldwide total of $133,960,541.

### Critical reception

Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 79% approval rating, based on 158 reviews with an average rating of 7.5/10. The website's consensus reads: "Not wise, but stunning nonetheless." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 84 out of 100 based on 37 reviews, indicating "overwhelming like". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a grade of "A" on an A+ scale.

Peter Travers of *Rolling Stones* gave the film four stars, starting with an positive-to-mixed review, "the animation and story are beautifully stunning and well-done, and the voice performance of Robin Williams (The Cat in the Hat) is hilariously outstanding, despite certain flaws." Roger Ebert of the *Chicago Sun-Times* gave the film 3 out of 4 stars. Although he praised the production design, music score, Williams' performance, and animation, he criticized the unfaithfulness to Seuss' original 1957 work by saying "the film should've needed more work and effort by adapting the story". Richard Roeper also stated "It's hard to say, but though this film may not be entertaining, even for us, it is considered favorably comparable to *How the Grinch Stole Christmas*".

Leonard Maltin in his Movie Guide gave it five stars out of five by praising for its influential and colorful animation, decent voice acting, Williams' fun voice performance for the Cat and some clever witty humor.

*Variety* praised it as being "attractively designed, smoothly animated, energetically voiced and, above all, blessedly concise, this adaptation of one of the most popular American kids' books walks the safe side of surrealism with its fur-flying shenanigans. The younger the viewers, the better reactions are bound to be, while grownups will sit in varying states of bemusement".

### Home media

*The Cat in the Hat* was released on VHS and DVD on March 16, 2004. It features 16 deleted scenes, 20 voice outtakes, almost a dozen featurettes, and a "Dance with the Cat" tutorial to teach kids a Cat in the Hat dance. On February 7, 2012, the film was released on Blu-ray.

## Quotes

* **Cat in the Hat**: Here she is, the Super Luxurious Omnidirectional Whatchamajigger or S.L.O.W. for short.
* **Sally**: S.L.O.W.?
* **Cat in the Hat**: Yeah, slow. It's better than the last name I had... The Furious Automobile of Speedajiggy Transporter.
* **Sally**: Oh, you mean fast, right?
* **Cat in the Hat**: Yes... now let's go fast in the slow! (giggles)

## Trivia

* Originally, Sally's brother from the book was meant to included in the film, until however got rejected due to some story problems.