Metacritic reviews

It's moderately engaging for the first half-hour, somewhat trying during the second half hour, and virtually unbearable over the final twenty minutes. It's a marginally recommendable film for kids, but not necessarily for parents.

Myers is the movie's fatal flaw, squeezing out the other characters who fatten the plot, mostly with an eye to parents.

Although a literal movie adaptation of Seuss' 1957 classic "The Cat in the Hat" might have run 20 minutes, is it too much to ask that the filmed material preserve the author's sensibility?

Someone (Myers?) came up with the bright idea of turning the Cat in the Hat into the worst Vegas nightclub spritzer of 1958. He's become a furry version of Rip Taylor: a walking, talking vaudeville idiot box.

It's a sort of soullessly cheerful cynicism that is about as far from Seuss as one can imagine.

Talk about your quick-buck exploitation.

As a British politician said of a corrupt but articulate peer, "The Cat in the Hat" is like a rotten mackerel seen by moonlight: It shines as it stinks.

Charmless and grating and immediately forgettable.

Such a remarkable rift between its charming source material and its heinous cinematic realization that the producers may as well have skipped the hassle of securing licensing rights and simply called this mess Mike Myers: A--hole in Fur.

Comes scarily close to being the most unendurable Hollywood creation of the last dozen years.