![]() ![]() Readers of the book can take it from here, and for the rest of you, I won’t spoil.Īs far as the CGI animation goes, Lorax looks as good as Horton with even better attention to whimsy and color detail (as long as you don’t get stuck with the necessary dimness of 3D), and the sight of the Truffula trees is one to behold. Of course, The Lorax (Danny DeVito) is the guardian of the forest, so he was having none of that shit and tried to warn them all. Fortunately, his tales are still related through a series of flashbacks, and The Once-ler reveals how (motivated by greed) he destroyed all of the trees. In the book, we only see The Once-Ler’s arms, but in the movie, he’s fully formed in the physical sense (and given a family as well), which humanizes him and makes us actually feel sorry for the dude, thereby defeating his once villainous purpose. O’Hare as a new villainous presence, but it jacks up the Once-Ler as well. That is, throwing a bunch of exciting shit into the fray like it’s a Wii game instead of a movie. ![]() ![]() Soon, Ted is zooming along on his motorbike in raucous fashion and fully hijacking the simplicity of Seuss’ work, but I guess that’s the only method of reaching kids from some filmmakers’ point of view. When Ted learns that Audrey wants nothing more than to witness a living Truffula tree, that’s all the motivation he needs to start tracking down The Once-ler (Ed Helms) with the help of his Grammy Norma (Betty White). O’Hare (Rob Riggle), who sells bottled air to great profit. They live in the Thneedville where all trees (and everything else) are synthetic, and the air supply is controlled by Mr. Seuss’ tale is reframed through introducing Ted (voiced by Zac Efron), a 12-year-old boy who has a massive crush on slightly older Audrey (Taylor Swift). Here’s what happens, and fans of the book will easily recognize what’s been added or modified from the original story. So while the film is technically faithful to the book, it still suffers a great loss in term of its essence. Instead, Seuss’ relatively dark tale has been transformed into a candy-corn confection, and the titular character has been largely reduced to a number of sight gags. It doesn’t carry the charm of Horton, and it’s not as fun (or slyly subversive) as director Chris Renaud’s most recent project, Despicable Me. In theory, anyway.Īs an Illumination Entertainment production, I’m sad to say that I was neither terribly impressed nor completely disappointed by The Lorax, which is merely just fine compared to most children’s entertainment. It’s not.” - that was put to paper in 1971 is still amazingly relevant and can be applied to all facets of life (not just the environment). With that said, the book’s lesson - “Unless someone like you cares a whole, awful lot, nothing is going to get better. This extra stuff neither adds nor takes away from the value of the main lesson but simply fills time. The core of the source material remains mostly intact, but the story receives much padding to reach 102 minutes of running time. Sure, let’s not kill the trees, but don’t expect the kids to remember any sort of message when the entire story has been bogged down and convoluted to drag this production out to feature length. It’s a children’s movie, and it’s meant to entertain. It’s such a bloody shame.įor the same reason that rightwing nutjobs shouldn’t be allowed to pilfer “A person’s a person no matter how small” from Horton Hears a Who, leftwing propagandists shouldn’t hope to carry any significance from the tree-hugging theme of The Lorax either. However, Hollywood simply cannot resist monetizing anything, and of course, the political pundits cannot resist appropriating the cinematic output for their own devices. Seuss books are often quite successful as 30-minute (or less) television specials, for Theodore Seuss Geisel’s simple stories pack the most punch towards a kid’s imagination when left to their bare bones selves.
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