The Cat in the Hat review – Bill Hader brings plenty but this animated rework is a mess

The Guardian · Jesse Hassenger ·

The SNL alum has an appealing energy and this is an improvement on the 2003 travesty but it’s also far too long and strangely corporate

Over a long enough timeline, perhaps every living alumnus of Saturday Night Live will play the Cat in the Hat. Mike Myers kicked off this unexpected tradition by embodying the furry, anarchic Dr Seuss character for a notoriously, almost defiantly ghastly 2003 live-action treatment. After doing us all the service of killing flesh-and-blood Seuss movies for good, Myers was later followed by a more charming Martin Short (via voiceover on a cute PBS/CBC animated series) and now Bill Hader, stepping into the role for a big-budget animated reboot from the oft-flailing animation division of Warner Bros.

Just to be clear, this is the same studio that passed on releasing not one but two well-liked features starring their trademark Looney Tunes characters in the last few years. (Puzzlingly, a new Looney Tunes short starring Daffy Duck nonetheless debuts in front of this movie.) Warner has one of the most storied animation libraries in American cinema (and, for that matter, plenty of great animated TV shows like Batman: The Animated Series and Animaniacs) but as far as features go, they’ve never settled on a clear creative vision. They seem just as adrift in a landscape crowded with serious competitors as they were back when everyone was imitating Disney.

Fittingly, their new Cat in the Hat emerges looking instantly secondhand, considering that past Seuss cartoon features have been handled by the likes of BlueSky and Illumination. The pilfering doesn’t stop there: the Cat’s magical base of operations bares suspicious resemblance to the laughter-producing factory of Pixar’s Monsters, Inc; the picture book’s Thing 1 and Thing 2 have been multiplied and slapstickified to more closely resemble the Minions; and the Cat makes repeated exclamations about the “best day ever!” that rip off the adopted catchphrase associated with Disney’s version of Rapunzel. Hader himself was a Pixar-vocal mainstay until a salary dispute over Inside Out 2 sent him packing.

Read the full story at The Guardian · All coverage of this story