Bill Hader is the Cat in the Hat – but Warner Bros animation still has no plan

Bill Hader voices the Cat in a new big-budget animated reboot of Dr Seuss's The Cat in the Hat from Warner Bros, and the early verdict is mixed: more appealing than the 2003 live-action disaster, but, in the reviewer's words, "far too long and strangely corporate".

The Guardian's review, published 6 November, credits the former Saturday Night Live cast member with "an appealing energy" in the title role. That energy, the critic argues, cannot rescue a film that stretches its slender source material well past its natural length and carries the fingerprints of committee filmmaking rather than anarchy — the very quality the Cat is supposed to embody.

A strange tradition of SNL cats

The review frames Hader's casting as the third act in an unlikely lineage. Mike Myers played the Cat first, in the 2003 live-action version the critic calls "a notoriously, almost defiantly ghastly" treatment — a film so poorly received, the reviewer writes, that it performed "the service of killing flesh-and-blood Seuss movies for good". Martin Short followed, voicing the character in what the review describes as "a cute" PBS/CBC animated series, and now Hader takes the stripes for the studio feature reboot.

Hader, the critic notes, brings more genuine charm to the part than Myers managed. The improvement, however, is relative. The film remains, in the review's judgment, a mess.

What does this say about Warner Bros animation?

The sharpest criticism in the excerpt is aimed not at the film itself but at the studio behind it. Warner Bros, the reviewer points out, declined to release two well-liked animated features starring its own trademark Looney Tunes characters in recent years — even as a new Looney Tunes short starring Daffy Duck now plays in front of this very movie. The critic calls that sequencing "puzzling".

The studio owns, in the reviewer's estimation, "one of the most storied animation libraries in American cinema", alongside admired television work such as Batman: The Animated Series and Animaniacs. Yet on the feature side, the review argues, Warner has "never settled on a clear creative vision" — adrift today in a market crowded with serious competitors, just as it was in the era when everyone imitated Disney.

What does this change for audiences?

For families, the practical answer is modest: a brighter, better-voiced Cat than 2003 delivered, but one that tests patience. For the industry, the review doubles as a case study of a legacy animation division still searching for an identity — releasing a corporate Seuss reboot while shelving films built on characters it already owns. The Daffy Duck short attached to the release may tell audiences more about what Warner animation does well than the feature that follows it.