The Cat in The Hat [DVD]

All good

Great film

Good

Great film Great viewing

Very entertaining, action packed, good characters. The humour is, actually funny. The songs and plot are good.

Subversive, surreal, funny for both adults and kids. Everyone is great including the kids, the mother and the very sleazy Alec Baldwin. Genius - tripping without any drugs.

This film has persisted as our family all-time favourite for three years now and I am only ordering a new one because we lost the original on holiday and some days its the only dvd that we can all agree on to watch (my kids are now 6 and 8). As other reviewers have mentioned it would be fair to say that the script and plot only really reference the original books (which both our kids also love), but the one-liners which Mike Myers (the Cat) comes out with are utterly hilarious and if the kids are watching, my husband and I always want to sneak a peek too. I think it has something for all ages, but agree with one reviewer that some young children might find some things a bit perilous, although is ultimately a happy ending. I am sorry that this film never became as popular as all our family feel it should have been. When we talk to other families almost no one has seen it or even heard of it. Perhaps the mistake was to call it the Cat in the Hat, as I guess is would attract fans of the books which are altogether more docile and well behaved. This is a riotous, messy, irreverential film about a broken family with a single working mum, who push their angst to the limit before finding that they all really love each other and that things are ok if they stick together. Not such a bad moral in the end.... and lots of laughs along the way - give it a go!

The film starts well setting "the stage" for the story to happen. It reminds me of the other Seuss stories, Tim Burton stories and a touch of Monty Python. But once the cat comes on the scene, played by one of my favourite actors (Mike Meyers), it seems to go down hill. The Cat is supposed to do fun stuff with the kids to losen them up from their stuffy old lives. Yet by doing so, it completely loses the threat of the story and it doesn't seem to make sense anymore, only to come together again (somewhat) at the end. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love weird and wonderful, but for some reason it didn't quite work. I still haven't worked out exactly why, but perhaps you should watch the movie yourself and make up your own mind. The weird and wonderful sense is very much there, if you like this kind of thing.