I don’t have hard data on this, but I suspect a lot of film critics will be tempted to write their reviews of the new, animated feature film version of “The Cat in the Hat” entirely in rhyme. I wish them the best of luck. I was tempted too. But personally, I don’t see the point in trying to capture the spirit of the book when the filmmakers considered it optional.
“The Cat in the Hat” was a picture book written and illustrated in 1957 by Theodor Geisel, better known to children all over the world as “Dr. Seuss.” It’s the story of two little kids who are home alone, bored out of their minds, and get visited by a mysterious anthropomorphic cat wearing a tall, striped chapeau. The cat tries to entertain them by breaking everything in their house, but just before their mother comes home he helpfully puts everything back the way it was.
The moral, if there is one, is that it’s okay to break all the rules — and your parent’s property — if no one finds out. The Cat in the Hat is the god of chaos, an external manifestation of unbridled creativity and lawlessness. He is a messy lynx who loves drama.
But in the latest adaptation of this classic story, which celebrates childish anarchy, we learn that anarchy is a day job.
The new Cat in the Hat works for a bureaucracy, and all his manic behavior is designed to teach children banal lessons about following your dreams and respecting your parents. These aren’t bad lessons, necessarily, but they’re the opposite of what “The Cat in the Hat” has represented for the last 69 years. Dr. Seuss’ style, personality and legacy are conspicuously absent from this animated feature, which recreates some of the book’s imagery and none of its charm.
Even the execrable live-action Mike Myers movie looks… well, not better, but more interesting in comparison. Bo Welch’s 2003 film is the cinematic equivalent of an out of tune air horn running at full blast for 82 minutes, but at least there’s a scene where the Cat in the Hat dresses like the self-aware, homicidal home invaders from Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games.” I wouldn’t call that a good idea for a kids’ movie — but chaos? Certainly it’s a form of chaos.
“The Cat in the Hat,” the 2026 edition, stars Bill Hader as the voice of the title character. He works at a weird business where interdimensional entities pop into our reality and entertain children for free. (I’d say “it’s a living” but nobody seems to have a financial plan.) The Cat in the Hat excels at amusing youngsters, which is good, but he’s terrible at cleaning up after himself, which is bad. So his boss says he has to make the saddest kids in the world happy using only a potato on a string, or else he’s fired.
The Cat in the Hat visits Gabby (Xochitl Gomez) and Sebastian (Tiago Martinez), two siblings who are currently living through the greatest torture any child could endure in a generic Hollywood family film: They just moved and they don’t like it very much. When they find out The Cat in the Hat has a Go-Backer, a device which can reverse time, Gabby tries to use it to prevent her mom from getting a new job and moving to the big city. But then, oh horror of horrors, it falls inside a cardboard box.
The question “The Cat in the Hat” dares to ask — a question no other film has ever asked before, because it’s boring — is: Which cardboard box? One box contains Sebastian’s belongings, another has all of Gabby’s possessions and the third has their mom’s paperwork in it. The Cat in the Hat shrinks them down, and they discover that every member of their family is defined by the stuff they own. Sebastian’s toys represent his desire to have fun with his sister, Gabby’s mementos represent her nostalgia for their old house and Mom’s stuff represents a valuable lesson which can be quickly presented in the third act of a mainstream family film.
One might argue that the changes this “Cat in the Hat” makes to Dr. Seuss’ story are the inevitable result of adapting a children’s picture book into a 107-minute feature film. Then again, one might also argue that, since the changes make the story worse, they prove that watering down an already-thin narrative is usually a bad idea. It would be one thing if “The Cat in the Hat” transformed the source material into something new and interesting — or even fun and funny — but instead, Dr. Seuss’ book has been manhandled and twisted to resemble the same mild mediocrity that “The Cat in the Hat” was created to subvert in the first place.
“The Cat in the Hat” isn’t an incompetent production, but it’s only competent at regurgitating a brand. The film is so inoffensive it makes no impression at all. It’s the kind of movie a corporation makes to exploit an intellectual property when they don’t understand what made it worth buying in the first place. The film teaches children that nothing about “The Cat in the Hat” is special, which means it’s not just underwhelming art; it’s also bad business.
We shouldn’t be thinking about business when we think about “The Cat in the Hat.” We should be thinking about breaking everything our parents own for the fun of it and how we can superglue it back together before they get home without getting our fingers permanently stuck to something. We should be thinking about living, not about marketing. We should be entertained, not bored. We should be reading a book that’s still anarchic almost 70 years later, not watching a new film that’s just like all the others.
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