As you know, I try not to read other people's reviews of movies before I review them myself, but when a movie gets such glowing notices as "a vulgar, uninspired lump of poisoned eye candy," it's hard to keep the news out of my inbox.

Before I went into the theater, I had already dusted off all of my favorite adjectives such as "abhorrent" and "repugnant" and "sucks." I was ready to write about how it was worse than The Master of Disguise, and how somebody should pick Dana Carvey up out of whatever gutter he's passed out in, strap a bunch of dynamite to him, and send him over to Mike Myers's house for a smoke.

You can imagine my shock when I actually went to see the movie, and found myself laughing and having fun for the first fifteen minutes! I thought, "Hey! This movie actually isn't that bad! This is going to turn out to be one of those films that every movie critic pans just because it's the popular thing to do, and I end up loving it. Like Viva Rock Vegas, or Hudson Hawk."

Then the Cat shows up...

A lot of people are saying that Mike Myers's portrayal of the Cat was just a crude mixture of his "Cawfee Tawk" lady and Austin Powers, but those people aren't being fair. Myers didn't play the character with nearly that much focus. There were spastic and erratic shades of everything from Charles Nelson Reilly, to Fred Gwynne, to the Kool-Aid Man.

You'll also be pleased to hear that there's this one sequence where the Cat plays a character with a Scottish accent, which is great, because I've always heard legends about this funny Scottish accent that Mike Myers does, but I've never seen him actually do it in a film.

Once the Cat shows up, the script becomes as scrambled, uneven, and obnoxious as he is. There's a Carmen Miranda inspired song and dance sequence that seems to have no purpose other than to provide nightmare fuel, and an "auto mechanic" scene that was inserted as a showcase for Mike Myers to display his flabby white ass, like he does in every goddamn movie he makes.

At one particularly random point, the Cat pushes the kids into a small street kiosk, only to find some kind of unexplained Cat Hat rave going on inside. This puzzling scene was pointlessly slammed into the middle of the movie just to give Mike Myers a chance to ogle overrated Internet porn sensation Paris Hilton as a scantily clad female club goer. At least when she was getting jiggy with the Cat, she didn't stop in the middle to answer her cell phone.

But as I said before, the movie is not all bad. Mike Myers does have some legitimately funny lines interspersed throughout the film. The problem is, by the time they start showing up, you're so committed to hating the Cat that you can't bring yourself to laugh at his jokes. It's like watching The Naked Gun today, and trying to enjoy O.J. Simpson's performance. Sure Nordberg is empirically funny, but there's just so much "brutally murdered his wife" baggage that you can't really find him that amusing anymore.

But don't worry if all the jokes fall flat, as Mike Myers laughs at his own performance more than enough to make up for the fact that nobody else in the theater does. He is clearly in love with himself through this whole movie, and you can almost see first-time Director Bo Welch giving up and running away with his tail between his legs in every nuance of Myers's hammy performance.

Besides that one annoying jackass in the gorilla suit, everyone else in the film turned in good performances, regardless of how much I may have hated them in the past. Adorable Dakota Fanning (best known as "the little girl from that movie with Ashton Kutcher's wife that nobody saw") was a delight, as was the other kid (best known as "the kid from that Bruce Willis time paradox movie that nobody saw"). Alec Baldwin (best known as "the guy from the movie where Anthony Hopkins fights a bear") was hilarious as the carrier of the the obligatory Military School threat, and Sean Hayes (best known for being so flaming as to be unwatchable) turned in not one, but two performances that were less grating than that of Mike Myers. Kelly Preston was also enchanting in her portrayal of the MILF.

When it comes down to it, the reason The Cat in the Hat was bad is almost a direct inverse of the reason that The Grinch was bad. The Grinch had a terrible screenplay that warped and perverted the original story and its yuletide message of non-consumerism to the point that it actually told the opposite tale of a sympathetic Grinch and the bastard Whos upon whom he is driven to take revenge. Even so, in those few shining moments where the movie actually allowed itself to parallel the text of the book, Jim Carrey didn't do a bad job as a live action incarnation of a Chuck Jones-style Grinch.

The Cat in the Hat movie, on the other hand, barring a few unnecessary barfing and hairball jokes, wasn't really that bad as a story. Sure, you could argue that the book was all about teaching kids to read and to be responsible, while the movie was about making them retarded with crude potty humor sight gags and ubiquitous marketing, but bear with me for a minute. Standing on its own as a dumb kids movie, the story wasn't worse than average. The only thing that made the movie loathsome and terrible was the portrayal of the Cat himself.

Maybe if Universal had cast Jim Carrey as the Cat, and Mike Myers as the Grinch, they could have at least come out of this Seussian debacle with one halfway decent children's movie and one total shitbox, instead of two total shitboxes.

Or it might have been better if the Cat was played by somebody else a little less creepy around children, like maybe Michael Jackson. Personally I would have loved to have seen the Cat played by Pierce Brosnan, but that's just me.

I'm really looking forward to next year's big screen adaptation of Dr. Seuss' Hop on Pop, providing that Producer Brian Grazer plays the part of Pop, and somebody hops on him until he fucking dies.

And now, a word from a misinformer.com supporter:                      
The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss reminds us of how much fun childhood can be. Our Halloween costumes feature some amazing Cat hats. Dressing up like the Cat in the Hat is just one of thousands of ideas for kids costumes for this Halloween. Use your imagination just like Dr. Seuss and have fun dreaming up your own creative costumes for any occasion.