‘The Cat in the Hat’ Review: Bill Hader Leads an Animated Dr. Seuss Comedy So Overstuffed It’s Like a Marvel Movie for Tots
Variety | 03.11.2026 19:00
When it came to devising the voice he would use for “Lincoln,” Daniel Day-Lewis spent months working out the precise timbre and inflection and rhythm of how he imagined Abraham Lincoln might have sounded. (The day he presented his Lincoln voice to Steven Spielberg, it felt momentous, as if the actor were unveiling a skyscraper he had designed.) All of which got me to thinking about the voice Daniel Day-Lewis might have used to play the Cat in the Hat. Reading the Dr. Seuss books as a kid, I always imagined the Cat in the Hat sounding vaguely aristocratic, a touch effete, with the edgy attitude of a blithe troublemaker. He was consciously obnoxious, though part of it is that he knew there was nothing really wrong with the mischief he was making. It was what every kid wanted and needed.
