Movie Review: The Cat in the Hat

 

Michael's Movie Grade: C

A decent if unfocused animated Dr. Suess movie. 

What really works about this movie is the main story. Rather than adapting the famous children's book, this film creates a new story based on the popular character. However, this new story is a surprisingly strong idea. It is a perfect fit for the character. Like in the original book, he is on a mission to help cheer kids up. This film imagines him as working for a company that sends out animal characters with rhyming names to accomplish this type of task, which is a clever idea. The kids themselves are pretty good characters that we can easily relate to and care about. Their story arc is surprisingly strong as well, creating some actually emotional resonate moments. All this is helped by a very appealing art style and strong animation. 

The problem with this movie is that despite having a strong story, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The filmmakers feel as if they have to constantly throw things at us to keep as entertained. What makes the original Dr. Suess book so timeless is that it is a simple story told simply. The new story here could easily have the same type of charm and feel. Yet there is just too much going on here for the film to have that kind of charm. The frenetic pacing constantly gives us new story elements, settings and gags (that very few of these gags are actually funny doesn't help). Rather than making the film feel more fun or larger in scale, this just makes it too crowded. Plus, nearly two hours of this frenetic pacing, gets tiring. It can get frustrating at times because there is a great family movie in here somewhere, but it gets lost among all the excess. There are simply too many ideas here to put into one movie. 

This film is accompanied in theaters by a delightful Looney Tunes short called Daffy Season. While it may not be on the level of the best Looney Tunes cartoons, it is fun and that is exactly what we want from Looney Tunes. 

While The Cat in the Hat isn't a bad film, it falls short of being the great family movie it could have been with a lot more focus.