My family bought "The Cat In the Hat" on DVD when it was first released. I suppose my kids were about 5 and 9 years old at the time. We watched it together but none of us liked it. The kids were bored. My wife and I were bored. We may or may not have even finished watching it. The only thing I recall for certain is that I threw it in a drawer. At the time, I recall asking my wife, "This is Dr. Seuss?!?"

Now, some 10+ years later...tonight, I dug out the old DVD. Why? What compelled me to watch this? After over a decade gone by. With almost 200 movies cued up in my watchlist that I want to see. With countless cable channels with movies and TV series available with a simple click of a remote control...why now? What mysterious force brought me to this movie? Tonight. Why tonight?

This movie is not right. There's something...off, about it. Oh sure. There's some bad jokes, some actors sleeping their way through their roles. But it's just the strangeness of it. The look of the movie is odd. Everyone looks empty. There's so much conformity. The houses and the cars. The yards and trees.

Mike Meyers as the Cat looks sick and I don't mean got-a-cold sick. His makeup and costume look wrong. And then there's the violence emanating from the Cat. It's disturbing. The Cat ogles a picture of the children's mother and dances suggestively with a woman in a nightclub. It has a fondness for dirty language and innuendo. It threatens to "end" someone and "make it look like a bloody accident". It wields a cleaver.

The Cat brings with it the unknown and perhaps even unconstrained evil when it unleashes the chaotic forces that are Thing 1 and Thing 2. It opens a portal to another dimension. What is going on? And why, with all this insanity, was I laughing?

I don't know how to rate this. I don't understand if I've witnessed something strange or wicked. Something good or bad? Why "The Cat In the Hat"? Why tonight? Why now...