82 minutes of pissing on Dr. Seuss's grave

Remember that whimsical story you read as a child about the magical cat who helped relieve the boredom of two kids trapped in the house on a rainy day? The filmmakers must not have read it, sadly, picking up instead "The Cat in the Saturday Night Live Skit" instead.

Mike Myers, doing a sort of combination of The Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz and Austin Powers decides to turn a silly creature into a perverted, violent, deranged and glib walking advertisement for Ritalin.

In a scene that was clearly intended to be included in Dr. Seuss's original story, had he had the space, the Cat turns into a furry version of Julia Childs, threatening to kill a copy of himself (and make it look like an accident) before accidentally chopping his own tail off in a cooking accident and then lamenting... "Son of a b----!" (cut to commercial). From what I understand, the original draft of "Yertle the Turtle" included a ten-minute cocaine-fueled orgy that was probably cut out for pacing reasons. Hopefully Ron Howard will kindly reinsert this scene should he acquire the film rights.

I seem to recall that there was once a time when children's movies were made for children. A time before the need to fill the film with double entendres, pop culture references and a desire to *beep* Paris Hilton in underground rave parties. These movies were made by "filmmakers" who used "scripts" to tell "stories." This, sadly, no longer seems to be the case.

Perhaps sometime, somewhere in the future, wiser men than I will be able to brilliantly explain the reason for a six-foot-tall anthropomorphic cat to lift up a filthy gardening tool, smirk and call it a "dirty hoe." And then try to lick it.

So the only real audience this movie can appeal to is irreverent college students who are fans of shows that happily subvert and rape their childhood memories, like Robot Chicken and Family Guy. But even they will be turned off by the movie's schizophrenic desire to also tug at the heart at the odd moment, too.

So who was this movie made for? Mike Myers. Honestly, that's the answer. If Mike Myers was still on "Saturday Night Live," and had been given an enormous budget for a skit, this is what he would have created: a spoof of a childhood classic, filled with dirty jokes, crude sexual gags and various slapstick violence all done in unbelievably poor taste. It would be a hilarious lampoon of an obviously clean target, all the more so since it's desire to offend would obviously be a joke enjoyed by the audience since no Hollywood movie would ever, EVER in their right mind release a film so base, distorted and disrespectful to Dr. Seuss's memory as this skit.

Right? Right?