Dr. Seuss - The Cat in the Hat Comes Back [VHS]

Anyone who is familiar with the Dr. Seuss series of Videos and DVDs knows that they are not attempting to be animation. While Chuck Jones turned the classic Grinch into the very pleasing, bugs bunny style cartoon, which has survived the test of time in its own right, this series holds true to the creator's original vision. Don't expect a cartoon, expect a Dr. Seuss book!

This is truly a book on video, and if that is what you want than you'll be pleased. It follows the text of the book and the "animation" is pictures from the book mildly animated. My son adores this video and it added to his love of books and his love of Dr. Seuss. He is 4 1/2 and clamors to read Dr. Seuss books daily. However, the video is also a nice addition to our reading time. And in the past, it held my 2 yr old's attention better than the book alone. Now as he matures he sits well for books also.

arrived as promised and in the expected condition

Somehow, I thought I remembered most of the Dr. Seuss stories being interesting animations from the 1960s, when I was a child. However, I now realize that only a few proper animations were created (like The Grinch Who Stole Christmas). This DVD is an overpriced, underproduced waste of time. It is merely the illustrations from the books brought to life - poorly. The movements are jerky and silly, the voiceovers are embarassing, and it captures my 3 year old twins imagination about as much as a blank screen. They LOVE the equivalent books, and we read them constantly. They are NOT interested in these amateurish renderings (which at times look like cut and paste silliness like Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame). If a three year old can tell the difference, then you will too. Even though the animation is limited, in the "Ken Burns" style or worse, the DVD compression is lousy with tons of visible artifacts all over the images. Do yourself and your kids a favor and buy the real books. Random House and Sony Wonder - whose logos introduce these productions - should be ashamed to market such inferior nonsense.

It takes a lot of tallent to make Dr. Seuss boring. The makers of this DVD somehow managed. There are lots of videos from the 1960s and 70s that have fully animated musical adaptations of Dr. Seuss stories with scripts and lyrics by Ted Geisel himself. My daughter loves them. Actually, so do I. This one, however, was so unappealing we both wanted to turn it off.

My daughter rented this video from our local library, hoping it was an animated version of a story from her favorite author. We were both sorely disappointed at the result. This video covers three books by Dr. Suess; The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, Fox in Socks and There's a Wocket in my Pocket. The video does not present animated versions of the books. The camera shows stills from the books while off-screen actors read the text. In a sense it is like the video reads the book to the children, except there are no words to actually be seen.Overall this video serves little purpose. Animated verisons of Dr. Suess's stories present dynamic and engaging visuals, and generally try to give a visual exploration of the text of the story. As there is no true animation here there is no engagement that would no be obtained from reading the book. At least the actors remain true to the original text, and we are not subjected to nauseating "improvements" of Dr. Suess's work, as in certain recent live action films.Where the video really fails though is the loss of the visual text. These books were written to be read to children to first of all introduce them to the concept of printed words having meaning, and second of all to inspire children to want to learn to read. This video presents books with no words, and thus fails its target audience on both counts.My personal conclusion is this; I cannot recommend this video to parents or educators. It doesn't engage the viewer like an animated feature, nor will it inspire a love of reading. I would recommend instead that people get the books and read them to their children. Doing this will provide the children with benfits that this dreary video could never hope to achieve.

This is not one of the animated Dr. Seuss episodes (such as The Cat in the Hat, The Lorax, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas) created by the Looney Tunes animators. This video is primarily a reading of the book illustrated mostly with stills from the book (which are either totally static or in some cases, panned to give the impression of animation.)So, if you're buying it for older kids or adults, I would recommend against it--it's not a very memorable experience. But, on the other hand, if you're buying it for a young child, I highly recommend it--my 3 year old daughter loves it!

This is extremely poor exploitation of Dr. Seuss book. This DVD has very poor animation. They took the shots of book and did not work on animation. The quality of picture is very poor too. It looks like someone's middle school project. Does not look like professsionaly done.