Both "Elf" and "Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat" attempt broad appeal, reaching for their respective stars' audiences while courting the family vote. Both are excessively calculating in the effort, balancing cheesy magic with caustic jokes and pop pastiche, sentiment with cynicism. Neither leaves room for acts of discovery or grace - two elements of the best family fare this year, "School of Rock" and "Finding Nemo."
Ironically, "The Cat in the Hat," adapted from Dr. Seuss' classic children's book about spontaneous anarchy, is the more soulless and circumspect of the two. Based on Seuss' story about a pair of unsupervised kids whose home is turned upside-down by the chaos-provoking Cat (Myers), the film offers little more than a flamboyant visual production. Its lack of substance opens the door to an opportunistic Mike Myers comedy, complete with Myers' cheeky charm and improvisations on such pop detritus as infomercials - made funnier with a Scottish accent, of course. Myers' labors are grafted onto rampant art direction by longtime production designer-turned-feature director Bo Welch, who has helped define the look of such hyperfantastic projects as Tim Burton's "Edward Scissorhands" and Barry Sonnenfeld's "Men in Black."
The result is formless energy and pretty pictures. Propped up by a screenplay (written by three "Seinfeld" veterans) that builds out the book's simple premise with lackluster ideas, "Cat" is a succession of wildly stylized settings in search of a heart. Or, at least, a performance half as stirring as the one Jim Carrey gave as the titular monster in 2000's Seuss-based "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" (made by the same Imagine production team responsible for "Cat").
Instead, "Cat" finds Myers cracking bathroom jokes to youngsters in the audience, pitching satire to adults and coughing up hairballs from his familiar repertoire of affable goofs, crusty eccentrics and schmaltzy confidantes. From beneath Myers' furry mask, the Cat's voice sounds, most often, like the comic actor's Linda Richman, hostess of "SNL"'s old "Coffee Talk" sketches. Elsewhere, in a scene that renders narrative form superfluous - as in "Austin Powers" or "Wayne's World" - Myers plays two felines in a mock TV pitch about a lame kitchen product. The setup is good for a laugh once around, perhaps. But this is Myers drawing on comfortable shtick, hiding behind impressions, accents and attitudes rather than focusing on his subversive character.
Absent depth, "Cat" is an unsatisfying sum of its Seuss-inspired, retro-'50s look and endless, computer-generated wackiness, including a rocket-propelled car and a parallel dimension in which the children, Sally (Dakota Fanning) and Conrad (Spencer Breslin), discover that their furnishings and other possessions are undergoing a surreal reconstruction.
Kelly Preston, playing the kids' single mother, doesn't bring anything essential to the table, nor does Alec Baldwin as her unctuous suitor and the story's inept villain. Interestingly, Sean Hayes of TV's "Will and Grace" seems prepared to pull the film in a more adventurous direction with his Jerry Lewis-esque stint as an overbearing boss named Humberfloob. (Hayes also provides the voice of the children's goldfish, who disapproves of Cat's antics.) But he doesn't get the chance.
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The supporting cast of "Elf," despite being more interesting, can't salvage anything like enchantment either. That's because "Elf" is on a short tether, creatively speaking. The film is a strategic, low-risk and cheap, or at least cheap-looking, attempt to bump up Will Ferrell's movie-star status and solidify a fan base before bigger productions - which he will headline - hit theater screens in 2004.
Ferrell plays Buddy, a tall human raised as one of Santa's elves at the North Pole. Full-grown and 30something, Buddy is unable to fit, literally, into elfin culture and work habits. Seeing his misery, Buddy's adopted father (Bob Newhart) and Santa himself (Ed Asner) advise him to seek his true destiny in New York City, home to Buddy's biological dad, Walter (James Caan). One of "Elf"'s more inspired jokes finds Buddy - in a reverse of young Clark Kent's nonchalant hike from Kansas to the top of the world in 1978's "Superman" - simply strolling from Santa's factory to Manhattan, a big galoot in green tights passing through zones of insipid Christmas topography (candy-cane forests and the like).
Once in the holiday-season Big Apple, Buddy proves a citywide annoyance, a big kid constantly crossing against the light, challenging the authenticity of department store Santas and paying visits to a baffled Walter, a children's-book publisher. Under pressure to raise profits, Walter is consumed with work and has no time for his wife (Mary Steenburgen) and young son (Daniel Tay), let alone an apparent kook. But after a DNA test clarifies paternity, Walter brings Buddy into his life and home, with bizarre and sometimes disastrous consequences.
As movies of this sort go, everything that makes Buddy an alien - from a diet requiring syrup on all meals to his excessive joy at any hint of Christmas atmosphere - eventually makes him cool, and his presence has a progressive effect on various characters. Among them is a depressed and isolated shopgirl played by Zooey Deschanel, an actress welcome in any film but unusually stirring in this one for her Janet Gaynor-like open face and wide eyes, a fragile visage set against overwhelming, big-city circumstances.
Actor-director Jon Favreau ("Made") brings enthusiasm to the proceedings but not necessarily wisdom. There is, for instance, a certain counter-productive flair to the casting. Asner's baleful air and Newhart's stuttering dryness are great treats for those who recall these actors starring in historic CBS sitcoms. But beyond their inside-joke cachet, these performer/pop icons are here to underscore the story's absurdity rather than help it develop emotion in time for what should be a spirited third act.
Likewise Caan, whose peculiar timing grinds against the film's pace. As for Ferrell: he's game for anything and will go to any length to play the dork, but, as with Myers, his performance requires that we see it as self-conscious mugging. Once Favreau ushers in a climax requiring genuine excitement and hope from the audience, it's too late: there is nothing about "Elf" that makes one care in a sustaining way.
Tom Keogh is a freelance writer in the greater Seattle area.
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