‘The Cat in the Hat’ review: So-so Dr. Seuss adventure is nauseatingly cute

Oh, the places you’ll retread.

Once more, Warner Bros. has thrown Dr. Seuss’ “The Cat in the Hat” up onto the big screen. And at least this time, the lanky furball with a penchant for trouble has made the leap with mixed results rather than a litter box of bad taste that was the 2003 live-action version starring Mike Myers.

But, as basic Hollywood family fare loves to do, the better animated movie still declaws the “Cat” and puts him into a tidy feel-good adventure box. Literally, in fact.

The title feline, voiced by Bill Hader, and two aww-shucks siblings go on a magic-ish journey through three cardboard moving vessels.

It’s almost never a good idea to divide up a story that way. Because if the experience is anything short of purrrfect, the viewer finds himself frequently glancing at his watch and muttering, “One down, two to go.”

In an irksomely modern fashion, the flick directed by Erica Rivinoja and Alessandro Carloni tries to make the Cat more of a fleshed-out character by turning the mischief-maker into a corporate employee, a la “Monsters, Inc.” His office colleagues include Mouse in a Blouse and Sherri from HR.

Their job is to turn unhappy kids’ frowns upside down. And, while the Cat is good at that aspect of the gig, he gets bad mess-o-meter scores, meaning he goes loco and wrecks homes in the process.

So his boss gives him one more shot to succeed, or else he gets the boot.

It’s all very “year-end performance review,” like we’re prepping toddlers for the harsh realities of the workforce. What’s next? “Horton Hears About His Benefits Plan”?

Cat is sent to the home of bummed-out “band geek” Gabby (Xochitl Gomez) and her little brother Sebastian (Tiago Martinez), who have just been unwillingly moved by their single mom Carmen (America Ferrera) to a new town.

The duo hopes that with the help of the strange talking pet and his dangerous time-travel device called the Go-Backer, they can return to their old house. Only — oh no! — the Go-Backer has been dropped in one of the moving boxes, which have morphed into cavernous universes. They have to trek through each one on a flying couch to find it.

(Checks watch.)

That trio of worlds — one for each Gabby, Sebastian and mom — bring to mind the colorful brain lands of “Inside Out,” only far less distinct or creative than in the Pixar movie. For instance, Carmen saves her son and daughter’s pasta art, which comes to life and marches around lacklusterly.

There’s not a single moment of visual wonderment in this.

The whole look of the movie lacks panache. Even when the Cat, in Mary Poppins mode, makes the manilla living room more vibrant, it’s not so much Dorothy arriving in Oz as some guy screwing in a higher-wattage lightbulb. The animation itself combines the recognizable lines of the cartoons with a 3D texture that comes off awfully direct-to-DVD.

As the crew is chased by an inoffensive monster called the Something, what the kids really discover — duhhhh — is typical saccharine messages: Love your mother, appreciate your younger brother more, home means family and so on. The teary takeaways are both expected and unnecessary. “Cat” is geared toward very young children. Do we really need to tell today’s seven-year-olds to adore their mommies more?

Maybe we should start with: Go outside.  

The reason that of all Seuss properties “The Grinch” translates best to the screen is the touchy-feely parts are balanced out by a funny neon jackass.

Here there’s a scolding landlady (Paula Pell) and a rude boss (Giancarlo Esposito), but “Cat” is pretty much all ooey-gooey. Though Hader tries to course-correct the movie’s lean into sap. As anybody who watched him on “Saturday Night Live” knows, he is an extremely gifted voice actor. Hader doesn’t go the cute route as he speaks rapidly and dry, and he certainly squeezed a few laughs out of me. The jokes are occasionally clever.

But that’s not enough to offset 90 commodity minutes of green eggs and schmaltz.