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Holly McClure (Crosswalk) writes, "Although there are some clever and funny scenes in this movie and it is visually a wonder for kids to behold, there is still something 'dark' that takes all of the fun out of it."

Rosemarie Ute Hoffman (Christian Spotlight) exhorts parents, "Stay at home with the book and your kid. See to it that your parental teaching is not undermined."

Movieguide's critic makes similar complaints about the film. But he is also dismayed to see that "the house is a disastrous mess. I remember feeling nervous about the mess upon mess upon mess in the children's book, and the director skillfully but irritatingly brings that same feeling into the movie. Get it cleaned up, and get that Cat out of there!" This casts Movieguide's mission to "clean up Hollywood" in a whole new light.

Meanwhile, in the nation's newspapers and magazines, the most widely read critics seemed to be competing for the most whimsical put-down. A.O. Scott (New York Times) says, "Welch has put together a vulgar, uninspired lump of poisoned eye candy that Universal has the temerity to call Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat. There is scarcely a moment of genuine laughter in the [movie.] Neutering, to prevent this beast from spawning sequels, is perhaps the most humane solution. Or maybe it is best to follow the advice of that wise fish: 'Make that cat go away! Tell that cat in the hat you do not want to play.'" You can scan the rest of the hissing and clawing mainstream reviews here.

21 Grams buries viewers in 20 tons of wearying melodrama

Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, who delivered the critically acclaimed Amores Perros two years ago, is back with yet another testament to his formidable filmmaking talents. 21 Grams boasts several unforgettably intense sequences and commanding performances from Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and especially Benicio Del Toro.

But when you take this chronologically scrambled narrative and think it through, what you find is a preposterous plot in which damaged, anxiety-driven characters give each other far more reason for the furrows in their brows. It's a circus of dispiriting behavior that has no sentiment more profound than this: "Be kind to each other, because everything else, especially religion, will fail you in the end." While it is not the focus of the film, Christianity is portrayed as a productive crutch for people with bad habits, a faith that ultimately collapses when a believer is tested by trials.

Just as he did in Iñárritu's earlier film, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga delivers a trio of crisscrossing narratives that overlap due to a traumatizing event. It all feels calculated, like the storyteller is not really interested in exploring issues so much as he is preoccupied with skewering his characters and making them writhe and squirm. These heavily-hyped 125 minutes feel more like 240 minutes of headache.

So, of course, there is heavy Oscar buzz accompanying the film's release.

Sean Penn, more morose and reckless than he was in the similarly bleak Mystic River, plays a math instructor named Paul Rivers who is dying of heart disease. After a life-saving heart surgery, he leaves his wife in order to pursue the widow of the man whose heart he now possesses. We are led to feel okay about that because Rivers' wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is portrayed as a selfish annoyance; she seems more focused on her own desire for a baby than on her husband's suffering. As if to heighten our disgust with her, the author gives her a secret: she once aborted Rivers' child without telling him.

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November (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47