The Cat in the Hat (film) with some critics, stating that it should have instead been rated PG-13 in relation to its high amount of adult content. Leonard Maltin in his Movie Guide gave it one and a half stars out of four saying that the "Brightly colored adaptation of the beloved rhyming book for young children is a betrayal of everything Dr. Seuss ever stood for, injecting potty humor and adult (wink-wink) jokes into a mixture of heavy-handed slapstick and silliness." Maltin also said that the film's official title which included "Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat" was "an official insult". Conversely, "Variety" praised
The Cat in the Hat (film) the Cat leaves a trail of destruction across the house and in the process releases two troublemaking things named Thing 1 and Thing 2 from a crate that he explains is actually a portal to his world. The Cat tells Conrad that he only has one rule: To never open the crate and allows the Things to have fun but they instead make a mess out of the house. Despite the Cat's warning, Conrad picks the lock on the crate anyway resulting in it attaching itself to the collar of the family dog Nevins. The three then drive the Cat's