9 Films That Ruined The Book

6. The Cat In The Hat

Following the mixed reviews garnered by 2000's How The Grinch Stole Christmas adaptation, another big screen outing for Dr. Seuss was enough to raise a few eyebrows, and rightly so given the mess that turned out to be Bo Welch's The Cat In The Hat. Full of lowbrow toilet humour, double entendres and 'nudge nudge, wink wink'-style jokes, the only stylistic trait that the film really shares with the 1957 book is the stripy hat on Mike Myer's head. The subtlety and cleverness of the book is lost, most likely hiding beneath the inch-thick prosthetic mask. Alec Baldwin, Myers' co-star, defended the film by reasoning that any adaptation of a literary entity is "an idea about something", requiring liberties to be taken and sweeping interpretations to be made. That's fair enough in a lot of cases, and perhaps the reason that some questionable book-to-movie transformations actually work, but for a film that officially bears the prefix "Dr. Seuss", such a stark departure from the spirit of the original book is just not on. Thanks to The Cat In The Hat, Dr. Seuss' widow Audrey Geisel has since decided not to allow any further adaptations of her husband's books. Thanks a lot, Bo Welch.