This one stars a guy named Mike. This one only kids will like. Theodore Seuss Geisel, you see, was smarter than you and smarter than me. He was as smart as smart can be. In his lifetime, the late writer known as Dr. Seuss kept adaptations of and marketing schemes for his simple yet intoxicating rhyming books to a minimum. But Hollywood got its hands into the pie anyway. So now we have “The Cat in the Hat” up on the big screen. It features Mike Myers in a fur suit that sheds. It also inexplicably sends him, along with two young cardboard co-stars, to an underground rave where we're treated to a two-second cameo by Paris Hilton. (Is she entertainment's newest and most ubiquitous product placement or what?) In book form, “The Cat in the Hat” and “The Cat in the Hat Comes Back” were aural masterpieces. In truth, the fish in the fishbowl got out, everything somehow turned pink, I think, and if we had $1 for every time we read either book to a kid we'd be swimming in green. But the books were ingeniously designed to help children improve reading, learn the alphabet and appreciate the beauty in the sounds of words. Myers' new film, on the other hand, is often a lot about belly button lint, dog pee, barf bags, hurricane-force burps and fresh, soggy hair balls. Many little kids, probably even most, are going to think this “Cat in the Hat” is just fine, thank you. They'll laugh when Alec Baldwin, as the film's nice guy who's really bad, gets slimed with purply gook. They'll figure it's funny when Myers' cat suddenly turns toward the audience in this Universal Pictures movie and sheepishly puts in a big wink-wink plug for the Universal Studios theme parks. As entertainment, “Cat in the Hat” is barely so-so. It aims at easy targets (like poking fun at kitchen-gadget infomercials). It barks when it ought to purr. And like the worst of “Pokémon” dregs in their latter gasps, the film slaps on a “life lesson” for the kids — as if that atones for whatever entertainment deficiences have preceded it. In the works for at least three years, this film started with one early script written completely in rhyme before it was abandoned. The final script, which only occasionally employs rhyming schemes, uses elements from both “Cat in the Hat” books. The story still focuses on a stuck-at-home brother and sister (played by Spencer Breslin and Dakota Fanning as if it's all a shouting game) but adds in a threat that their mom (Kelly Preston) will be fired by her quirky boss (Sean Hayes) if her home is messy when co-workers arrive for an office party. For his part, Myers comes on like a cross between his helmet-haired Linda Richman from “Saturday Night Live” and Nathan Lane, with a touch of a laughing Bozo the Clown tossed in. His cat is clearly inspired by Robin Williams' manic genie in “Aladdin,” though it's just as clear Myers can hardly keep pace. The massive white facial prosthetics the comic must wear limit the facial expressions he can use to give his lines extra punch. What does work in this movie are the spectacular sets, which happen to be the forte of director Bo Welch. He was the production manager for “Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands,” “Batman Returns” and “Men in Black.” For “Cat in the Hat,” Welch's sets are full of vibrant colors and distorted shapes. Oddly, even better than the sets are the opening credits, in which the familiar logos of the production companies — Universal, DreamWorks and Imagine Entertainment — are rendered in blue, white and red drawings that match the color scheme and style of Seuss' original books.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: By BOB LONGINO