HERE'S TO HOPING CURIOSITY WILL CLEANLY KILL THIS `CAT'.(LIFE & LEISURE)

Byline: STEVEN REA Knight-Ridder

Self-cannibalizing Disney execs have gnawed right to the bone with their numbing, witless remake of the studio's mid-'60s lark ``That Darn Cat!''

Maybe it says something that this new version -- which stars a pained-looking Christina Ricci and the utterly unfunny Doug E. Doug in the roles originated by Hayley Mills and Dean Jones -- arrives without that exclamation point: a tacit acknowledgment that this ``That Darn Cat'' lacks even the zip suggested by a punctuation mark.

Set in a small New England town populated by folks who in a better world (and a better movie) would be described as lovable eccentrics but who …