Hacker Cinema
The Cat in the Hat
2003 · Film · 82 min
Directed by Bo Welch
During a rainy day, and while their mother is out, Conrad and Sally, and their pet fish, are visited by the mischievous Cat in the Hat. Fun soon turns to mayhem, and the siblings must figure out how to rid themselves of the maniacal Cat.
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7 comments on Hacker News
Elementary school me was introduced to the physicality of Taiwanese parliamentary politics from the Cat in the Hat movie (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rtXccR1h_Ak).
It's an underrated movie tbh, especially given that Barbie got an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes
The Lorax, The Cat in the Hat, and The Grinch movies also were completely warped by Hollywood.
Type "The Cat In The Hat" in a search engine. Surprised to see a Mike Myers film all over the front page?
Or try "Alice in Wonderland".
Search engines are too of the moment — maybe too corporate-bent? Or do we blame the users? Do most people want a bad film when they search rather than a literary classic?
It definitely skips the opening credits on the shows my kids watch (Octonauts, Cat in the Hat, etc.). For better or worse, both of these also have another song in the episode near the beginning (the same song, every episode).
This is on a Roku 3, not sure if it's a different experience for other devices.
That cat in the hat movie was an abomination. I mean, the source material isn't much to work with, however they just took the character and plopped him into some nonsense storyline with naught but suggestive glances towards the book.
Horton hears a who was pretty good though, and I think that was because the book had a plot that you could work with. The lorax had that possibility, but they just mucked it up.
If you're wondering how bad The Lorax feature film really was, put succinctly it felt like it was embarrassed about its source material. Few of Seuss' words remain in the dialogue; on the one rare exception, the words were spoken by a character not found in the book and then immediately dismissed as weird.
If The Lorax had Seuss rolling in his grave, The Cat in the Hat with Mike Myers had Seuss spinning hard.
Horton Hears a Who on the other hand is quite good; an honorable example of how Seuss' material can be adapted to a feature film.
There is a HUGE difference between "buying knock offs" and copying something that should be in public domain. For one thing knockoffs tend to be cheap and poor quality. But this isn't just about "copying" it is also about using, and remaking and recreating. If the 1978 law was still in effect I could create a cat in the hat game or movie, without having to pay licensing fees.