The 'family film' comes a cropper. Two rambunctious kids are babysat for the day by a talking cat in a red-and-white striped hat, whose comic shenanigans are meant to teach the tykes about love and responsibility. Three unfortunate screenwriters (Alec Berg, David Mandel, Jeff Schaffer) attempted to bring the immortal, unfilmable children's book by Dr. Seuss to the screen, and their sweat-stains are all over the returns. Imaginative art direction and conceptual design do not a movie make...and this one wears out its welcome before the Cat even makes his entrance. There isn't one funny line or performance in the misbegotten enterprise, which director Bo Welch has apparently targeted toward kids with Attention-Deficit Disorder. In the lead, Mike Myers (talking like Bert Lahr doing a Borscht Belt routine) has been made up and costumed with great care and attention, and yet none of his shtick feels fresh. The chaos which erupts (including treating the staircase like a luge--a joke Welch liked so much he repeats it) is mainly a pastiche of highlights from other films. Cheap, ugly, and claustrophobic, the film can't even get by as an oddity because the actors are all straining so hard to sell it. "Beetlejuice" did this type of thing far better...and even "Drop Dead Fred" is preferable. NO STARS from ****