Nothing beautiful about this behind

Decisions made by the guys (and, yes, most really are guys) who run Hollywood are often easy to understand. If it will make money, they do it, even if what they do may be in poor taste, may treat us as if we have double-digit IQs and may treat sex and violence as if they are one and the same.

Take “The Cat in the Hat” as an example. It’s directed by Bo Welch, the first-time feature director, but more important it’s produced by Brain Grazer. Having won his first Oscar in 2002 for having produced Ron Howard’s “A Beautiful Mind,” Grazer is the guy who brought us 2000’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” After having ruined that children’s Christmas story, Grazer has now overseen the trashing of a second Dr. Seuss story.

How does he ruin it? By letting Mike Myers run wild as the title character. By letting the screenwriters pack in jokes too smutty for Def Comedy Jam . By adding story elements that have more to do with Tim Burton than they do Dr. Seuss. By simply settling for the notion that too much is just right.

Will “Cat in the Hat” make money? No doubt. In a late-afternoon screening of the film on Friday, a dozen people were in downtown’s Spokane’s AMC River Park Square Cinemas. Several were children, who must have wondered why Alec Baldwin was picking lint from his belly button, why Myers was calling a garden tool a “dirty hoe,” why Myers’ cat felt the need to expose his plumber’s behind and, worst of all, why the film was so insistently, so relentlessly unfunny.