The Cat in the Hat is a textbook example of what can happen when a Hollywood studio throws everything at the audience. Based on one of the most popular titles in Theodor S. Geisel's catalogue, the $100 million-plus film had "Hit" written all over it. Ultimately though, even a picture-perfect pedigree wasn't enough to turn it into a box-office winner.
Having turned Austin Powers into a franchise, Mike Myers was considered an ideal match for the irrepressible feline in a red-and-white, striped, smokestack chapeau. Bo Welch had yet to direct a feature, but he'd served as production designer or art director on some of the most brilliantly conceived sets in recent memory, including Edward Scissorhands, Men in Black and The Birdcage. Ron Howard's producing partner, Brian Grazer, was at the helm, and the credited writers all had worked on Seinfeld.
The result: a critical disaster which, even at 78 minutes, seemed long.
Welch and production designer Alex Zimmerman's visual artistry could hardly have been more delightfully rendered, but every time the narrative strayed from the original text, The Cat in the Hat morphed from Seuss to Myers. And, even though the star was encased in the synthetic skin of a 6-foot-tall alley cat, he might as well have wrapped himself in a Union Jack left over from Austin Powers. The mugging, inside jokes and wisecracks which typically fuel Myers' parodies, and cutesy-poo appearances on talk shows, for that matter, simply served to accentuate his trademark goofiness over the benign anarchy of Seuss' source material.
The Cat in the Hat, which grossed far less than the not-much-better How the Grinch Stole Christmas, should find a far less demanding audience in its DVD incarnation, though. The bonus material is well-suited for younger viewers, and incidentally, production design fans, who won't object to Myers' shapeless characterization nearly as much as did the teens and adults who felt shortchanged by the big-screen version.
Yabba Dabba Scooby Doo
Adaptations of The Flintstones and Scooby-Doo didn't fare much better artistically than The Cat in the Hat. Their aging legion of fans will be delighted to learn, however, that boxed sets of the shows' first seasons are available as part of the Hanna-Barbera Golden Collection (the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! set also includes the second season). While it's difficult to praise the cut-rate animation H-B brought to television in the '60s, the studio outlived most of its critics and won international audiences. And, at least compared to what now passes for TV animation, The Flintstones and Scooby-Doo might as well be Fantasia.
Speaking of cartoons, Koch Vision will release on April 6 eight hours worth of Popeye created specifically for television. Despite whatever good may be implied by the title, Popeye: 75th Anniversary Collector's Edition, the King Features shorts can't hold a candle to the Fleischer/Famous studio originals. Even so, the wonderful characters will be familiar to Boomers, and their kids won't really care. Robert Altman's live-action Popeye, with Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall, is much easier to recommend.
Back in Black
Newcomers to Comedy Central's 2-year-old Chappelle's Show can catch up with the hilarity they've missed with the Season One: Uncensored boxed set. Dave Chappelle is a gifted mimic, whose wicked parodies of hip-hop culture and race are as dead-on as you could possibly hope to see on television. This collection presents a season's worth of cutting-edge material, all delivered blessedly unbleeped and unblurbed, including deleted scenes, unaired Ask a Black Dude skits, and commentary by Chappelle and co-writer Neal Brennan.
Thirteen years ago, filmmaker Robert Townsend, author of the still-relevant satire, Hollywood Shuffle, launched a series of variety shows for HBO and Fox Television. The third edition of Partners in Crime is available on DVD, and makes a terrific companion piece to Chappelle. Seen in their creative infancy are such stars-to-be as Sinbad, David Allen Grier, Shawn and Marlon Wayans and Tommy Davidson.
They Coulda Been Contenders
If the Motion Picture Academy hadn't nominated Sean Penn for Mystic River, its members could have just as legitimately put him on the Best Picture short list for 21 Grams. As it was, his co-stars, Benecio Del Toro and Naomi Watts, deservedly made the cut in the supporting categories, playing people whose lives intersect with the professor's at crucial junctures. The film was directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga, the Mexican creative team responsible for Amores perros, arguably the finest film released anywhere in 2000.
In any other year, Cate Blanchett probably would have been nominated, too, for her portrayal of a real-life Irish journalist assassinated by criminals whose enterprise she exposed in Dublin's Sunday Independent. Veronica Guerin was directed by Joel Schumacher (Phone Booth, two Batman sequels) and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, who's much better known for producing movies (Pearl Harbor, Pirates of the Caribbean) with budgets at least $100 million more than what this biopic cost to make. Good for him.