The Cat In The Hat robs Dr. Seuss of his juice

It’s just not a Cat In The Hat movie unless the fate of the universe is at stake. At least The Lorax and its copious filler had the dignity to come in under 90 minutes. Milking 107 minutes from a mere 223 words, The Cat In The Hat is no longer a creature of Dr. Seuss, but of the modern film industry. Hell, if Dick and Jane made their way onto the big screen today, they’d also be battling giant monsters, exploring mopey backstories, and teasing future spin-offs where we’d finally get to see Spot run. Certainly, there is the issue of what exactly to do during a Cat In The Hat feature film; even the 25-minute animated special from the ’70s grows long in the tooth almost immediately. But the directions this annoyingly familiar film takes, like so many IP-based animated films that find themselves with an hour-and-a-half to kill, expand the contained children’s book so broadly that it’s flattened into something generic, interchangeable, and saccharine. A handful of good gags, some relatively adventurous animation, and Bill Hader hamming it up far more palatably than Mike Myers means that this isn’t a desecration, but something more melancholic: A marketable softening of edges that will eventually blur so many classic creations into one another.

Written and directed by veteran comedy scribe Erica Rivinoja and longtime animator Alessandro Carloni, The Cat In The Hat divides itself immediately into different realms. Universe-hopping is so hot right now. For starters, the Cat (Hader) works for the Institute For The Institution Of Imagination And Inspiration, LLC—yes, barging into homes isn’t just a calling for him, but a profession, and he has multiple conversations with his HR representative—in a heightened, imagination-fueled world full of self-rhyming coworkers like Pig In A Wig. He drops in on various children in the real world having boring days, brightens things up with his brand of absurd chaos, and bounces once his enjoyable disasters have begun to have consequences. Hader plays this with restrained mania, sneaking in a few understated deliveries among the requisite yelling.

This leads to the next division of worlds: The Cat’s latest assignment, given to him as an impossible case by his conniving boss (Giancarlo Esposito), is that of latchkey siblings Gabby (Xochitl Gomez) and Sebastian (Tiago Martinez). The depressed pair are new in town, brought there by their single mom (America Ferrera) and surveilled by an imposing landlord (Paula Pell). Their personal belongings are divided into moving boxes, one for each member of the family, which will later provide representative magical worlds for the group to hop into and explore. Oh, and they do this because the Cat misplaces a MacGuffin that can turn back time (and tear apart the universe, gasp) in one of these boxes, which is just an excuse for them—and a legitimately nightmarish, toothy monster—to chase after it, ending with a climactic monster-fighting set piece. Of course, could you even call it a Cat In The Hat movie without a Ready Player One-style battlefield showdown? 

These siloed landscapes at least allow for the animators to stretch away from their comfort zone. When in the real world, DNEG (That Christmas, The Garfield Movie) applies the same kind of rounded, Illumination-like CG from their other projects. When in one of the imagination-driven spaces, a more expressive cel-shaded touch adds depth to the otherwise rubbery characters. It’s just one more reason that spending any time in Gabby and Sebastian’s apartment, parceling out endless backstory for both parent and children, screeches the film to a halt, even when it cynically stops to roll out the red carpet for Thing One, Thing Three, and about a dozen more. (“No Thing Two?” you may ask. You would not believe me if I told you what Thing Two’s whole deal was.)