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story – As a last chance to prove his incredibly angry boss and keep his job, the Cat in the Hat is assigned the most difficult task as an agent of IIII (Institute for Imagination and Inspiration, Ltd.): to cheer up siblings Gabby and Sebastian, who are struggling to move to a new city.
actor – Bill Hader, Matt Berry, Quinta Brunson, Xochitl Gomez, Giancarlo Esposito and America Ferrera
team – Erika Rivinoja and Alessandro Carloni (directors/screenplays)
launch time – 107 minutes
In 1957, a book was published that would become Dr. Seuss’s defining work. Fast forward almost 70 years to 2026, and the latest big screen adaptation of the story is opening in theaters. Like the source material, it’s clearly aimed at the youngest audience, who can sit relatively still in public, apart from the expected tittering and giggling. It’s amazing, then, that the film takes a 61-page picture book with minimal text and stretches it to a staggering hour and 45 minutes. Fortunately, the 107 minutes are packed with decent jokes and colorful animation, but knowing the simplicity with which The Cat in the Hat is based, it bursts with too much plot.
Voiced by Bill Hader, this rambunctious cat gives voice to a performance that oscillates between loose, goofy energy and shocking somnolence. At times it sounds as if he recorded his lines while lying down, especially in the opening sequence, which should establish his over-the-top fun-loving nature. Here we learn that the cat is IIII—an employee of the Institute of Imagination and Inspiration Ltd.—who sends his anthropomorphized animals to the homes of children in need of a lift. (Anyone remember “Monsters, Inc.?”) At the office, their performances are judged on two scales: how much fun the kids had and how much of a mess they left behind. Cat excels in the former department, but the Mess-O-Meters that measure the latter usually max out when he returns from a gig. Tired of dealing with her destructive glee, Cat’s boss, Mr. Hoogboom (playfully voiced by Hollywood bad boy Giancarlo Esposito) gives her one last mission to prove she can work within the demands of the job. But Hoogeboom doesn’t make it easy, setting several traps for the cat, including assigning it to a child who falls into the most severe, seemingly helpless category of unwitting consumers.
That child is Gabia (Xochitl Gómez), a teenage girl who is even gloomier than most kids her age because her mother (the always warmly charismatic America Ferrera) has moved her and her younger brother Sebastian (Tiago Martinez) from their beloved home into an apartment building. Distraught and destabilized, Gabby doesn’t act like herself, going so far as to throw out her beloved trumpet rather than join her new school’s marching band. In other words, he desperately needs cheering up. After a mother leaves for her first day at a new job and leaves her two children behind, Cat shows up to show Gabby that there’s still fun in her new home and that her life might not be as tragic as she thinks.
If that sounds like a lot of exposition, it’s even more unpleasant to watch (there are a few more supporting characters and subplots I haven’t even mentioned). It takes about 30 minutes before the cat and the kids finally set off on the otherworldly adventure that sets up the film. And the next hour includes a MacGuffin fetch-quest, backstories-upon-backstories that are so loaded they need reporting, multiple lessons learned by the main character, multiple parts drawn out for way too long, three different villains, and dozens of things (the movie greatly expands the little blue-haired boys in the studio to minimal effort). Obviously, adapting a picture book into a feature film requires expansion and additions, but damn! Even the damned live-action adaptation by Michael Myers was only 82 minutes long, 25 minutes shorter than this animated version. Like the destruction caused by the titular cat, the overwrought story is terrifying.
Fortunately, the film remains funny throughout, with jokes and scenes that occasionally make adults in the audience laugh. One sequence of Circus of the Fishes, featuring a circus act of fish, is practically daring in the way it defies expectations of comedic timing, and it’s really funny. But like almost everything about the film, some parts go on too long, like the slapstick-heavy scenes that center around the subjects.
While it doesn’t attempt to replicate the look of the book’s original illustrations, the film has a defined art style that changes with its setting. When we’re in the real world Gabby calls home, the designs and animation vocabulary are decidedly more grounded and stable. But in the realm of Cat’s imagination, the entire film takes a more cartoonish approach, both in design and in the actual style of character movement and interaction. It’s a smart choice that signals to the audience how they should feel and serves as a handy visual shorthand aid to center them. Lorne Balfe’s jazzy, frenetic musical score soars in these sequences, adding an extra element of wonder to the film.
While Heather’s central voice performance is as variable in quality as the mood of the cat, every other actor who entered the recording studio for the film is excellent work. In particular, Xochitl Gomez and Thiago Martinez are both excellent as the main brother and sister. Gómez’s Gabi is appropriately moody, while Martinez’s Sebastian has all the energy you’d expect from a young guy, but neither is cloying or one-note in their characterizations. Matt Berry is also hilariously dry (though his character isn’t) as Waffle, the suddenly talkative fish of the family.
But as great as the animators and voice actors are, I can’t stress enough how over-the-top the story is. I think it’s wrong that anyone who takes their kids to see a movie adaptation of a picture book should expect to be in the theater for over two hours, including the trailer. And it’s not just the length that’s too much; The story is just too dense. The Cat in the Hat is fun, but to get as good an experience in a short amount of time, stick to the book.
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