Don't Let the Cat Out

Conrad and Sally Walden live in the city of Anville with their single mother Joan, who works for neat-freak Hank Humberfloob as a real estate agent and is dating their next-door neighbor Larry Quinn. One day, Joan leaves her children at home with a lethargic babysitter, Mrs. Kwan, while she goes to the office, forbidding them to enter the living room, which is being kept pristine for her company's bimonthly Meet & Greet office party which she is hosting that night. After Mrs. Kwan falls asleep, Sally and Conrad meet the Cat in the Hat, a sarcastic, wisecracking anthropomorphic cat with a red-and-white striped top hat and a large red bow tie, who wants to teach them how to have fun despite the objections of the family's pet fish, who is revealed to talk. In the process, the Cat leaves a trail of destruction throughout the house (such as jumping on the couch, baking cupcakes that explode in the oven, and ruining Joan's dress by cleaning the wall with it) and releases twin troublemakers, Thing 1 and Thing 2, from a red crate which he locks and forbids the children to tamper with, explaining that it is a portal to his world. He then tells the Things to clean Joan's dress, but they end up trashing the house instead, as they always do the opposite of what they are told. Despite the Cat's warning, Conrad picks the crab lock on the crate, which grabs onto the collar of the family dog Nevins, who runs off. The trio leaves the house and sets off to search for Nevins and get the lock back. Meanwhile, Larry is revealed to be a rude, disgusting, and unemployed slob in debt due to being too lazy to work for a living, and is pretending to be a successful salesman in order to marry Joan for her wealth, as well as planning to send Conrad to military school so that he can get him out of the picture. Larry sees Nevins and kidnaps him, but the trio drives in the Cat's super-powered car after them and the Cat tricks him into returning the dog. Larry goes and tells Joan about the kids, but they are stalled by the Things posing as police officers. Larry then races after the trio and tells Joan to meet him at the house. When the trio return to the house, Larry cuts the children off and orders them to get inside the house, where he sneezes uncontrollably due to his cat allergy. The Cat takes advantage of it and scares him, only for them to find that the house has been transformed into "The Mother of All Messes", with Larry falling into a purple gooey abyss. The Cat, Sally, and Conrad ride on the still sleeping Mrs. Kwan and navigate through the surreal house to find the crate and lock it, whereupon the house returns to its normal proportions but immediately collapses. In a heated argument, the children discover that the Cat planned the whole day and furiously order him to leave. Conrad and Sally realize their mistake and resign themselves to facing the consequences when Joan comes home, but the Cat returns with a cleaning invention and, with the help of the Things, fixes the house. Conrad and Sally reconcile with the Cat and thank him for everything, and he departs just as Joan arrives. Larry, having survived the fall and merely covered in goo, comes in, thinking he has busted the children, and tries to tell Joan about the mess and the Cat's world. Joan, having seen the clean house, does not believe his story and says that Conrad, while indeed a troublemaker, is nice on the inside before outrightly dumping Larry, much to his humiliation and dismay. After the successful party, Joan spends quality time with her children by jumping on the couch with them, while the Cat and the Things walk off into the sunset.