There are two things which are true of the works of the man born Ted Geisel. One, that for the most part they’re still magical, beautiful works beloved by children. And two, that they make terrible screen adaptations.
Sure, How The Grinch Stole Christmas was successful, if not good, and the 2012 animated version of the The Lorax made a bold attempt to turn around fifty lines of text into a feature length movie and failed so, so badly.
You’re wrong to feel that way, makers of the Lorax.
Then again, the godawful Mike Myers crapsplosion that was The Cat In The Hat was such an abysmal creation that Geisel’s widow Audrey Stone issued a blanket ban on all future live-action adaptations of her late husband’s work. High praise!
Yeah, that’s a cool and normal joke for a kid’s film. Definitely worth keeping in.
The problem is that a lot of his books were deliberately written as ways for kids to learn to read. The genius of Seuss was making them into whimsical flights of fancy despite being specifically limited to 250 simple words, which is why they’re still useful today.
And now one of them, ‘Green Eggs and Ham’, is being turned into a 13 episode series on Netflix and… honestly, what?
For those who haven’t read the book in a while, here’s a précis: Sam I Am offers the book’s unnamed protagonist a meal of eggs and ham which as, are the title suggests, green. Mr Am presents this repast in a series of unlikely locations, being rebuffed each time, and then eventually the nameless central character relents. The end.
Spoiler!
The trailer for the series is below, and the fact that it opens with someone saying “drop the flavour hammer” is an early indication that this is written by people who do not have your best interests at heart.
Aside from the aforementioned Izzard, the show will also feature Tracy Morgan, Ilana Glazer, Keegan-Michael Key, Daveed Diggs, and John Turturro. Oh, and Workaholics‘ Adam Levine as Sam I Am and dear god, no.
Fun fact: we’ve all been pronouncing the Doctor’s pen name wrong. It rhymes with voice, not loose. How did we not know that?
