The last of four such discs, The Cat in the Hat is grinched by The Grinch just as the title suggests. However, he does it so easily. This isn’t the robust and tough psychopath that is the Cat in the Hat I remember. He’s a pussy, not a pussycat. Anyone could best him.
The Grinch wakes up feeling fine one pleasant day, all the worldly grinchiness gone out of him. Then his mirror reminds him who he is and he sets about grinching things up with particular focus on the ever-chirpy Cat in the Hat. Naturally the Cat suffers this guy long enough before turning around and exacting his revenge.
The animation here is among the better efforts of the collection of Dr. Seuss animated cartoons, which might have something to do with the fact that this one was created several years after the others in the set. The colours are brighter and more even, though the style is starting to get further away from Dr. Seuss’ original dreamings.
Also included is a cartoon of equal length in The Hoober Bloob Highway, which is the mystical bridge between Earth and the Heavens. Here every baby gets to make the decision upon whether it in fact wishes to go to Earth and be a Human and the arguments for and against are forthcoming. Naturally, the good in people wins out and life is rosy, regardless of pitiful poverty or rank disease.
If you’ve been diligently collecting the set, this one won’t stand out against any of the others. It’s pretty much the same old thing, but for the refined linework and slicker animation. The same level of Dr. Seuss silliness is about, but this one does feel like it’s been sculpted purely for television and not adapted from a beloved children’s book.
Touted as the grudge match of the century, The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat had potential if it were a one for one punch fight. Unfortunately, in this format, seeing the Cat in the Hat squeal like a pussy for the first three-quarters eliminates any charisma he has at all.
Colours are exceptionally bright here and look fairly sharp for a cartoon of this one’s age. Made in 1976 it is a good five years behind the original The Cat in the Hat animated release and the production values easily attest to that. Clean linework and better animation are utilised with some fairly nice - but frustratingly short - other animated formats. One piece sees the Cat animated with third dimensional shading and light and resembles hand-painted acrylic or colour pencil work, but this is all too brief; barely noticed before flitting past and gone forever. Oh well. There’s also a distinct lack of film artefacts, which is nice for a piece nearly 30 years old.
Dialogue is much the same as the others, though the Grinch himself speaks a lot like Scar from The Lion King does. The Cat sounds pretty weak-willed in voice, but together they are both easily enough understood. Sound effects are naturally comical and work well, but the music is again where the age of this cartoon is evident. Every chance they get some bloody hippie sounding woman starts singing away to herself and filling the film with a dated Woodstock vibe that is quite nauseating. The score, again composed by Dean Elliott, is suitable for the piece with plenty of peaks and valleys to fill the action, though it’s still nothing worth writing home about (on some sort of purple flying butterfly mushroom paper or something).
The only extras we get here come in the form of two karaoke bits for the kids (or mentally defective adults) to sing-along to. Yeesh. These are What Makes a Grinch Tick? and Fun to Be a Human (though who has a basis for comparison?)
Overall if you’ve been collecting the set, this one will sit alongside the others nicely, but it might have been a less obvious money-making device for them to release more of these on the same discs, rather than stretch four discs out of them that don’t effectively have any extras. A two-disc set would have been nicer and represented better value than these four individual offerings.
