Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! - Movie Trailer Video Preview ( USA )
March 16, 2008 — orthai25
Admittedly, it’s been about 35 years since I was reader of Dr. Seuss, but my memories of his books are that they’re short and economical with words. Neither of those descriptions applies to this theatrical version of Horton Hears a Who!, which has found a way to take a thin, pithy book and stretch it out to feature length - despite the fact that a completely acceptable and much shorter version already exists. This is not the first time the good doctor’s material has undergone such stretching. The live action How the Grinch Stole Christmas survived the experience but The Cat in the Hat suffered fate worse than eating green eggs and ham. Horton Hears a Who! doesn’t enter the live-action realm, which is probably a good thing, but the lengthened result has its own charm and is enjoyable in a family-friendly sort of way, even if it feels a little like Dr. Seuss by way of Ice Age.
Horton (voice of Jim Carrey) is an elephant who lives his life much as animated elephants in animated jungles do, until the day a remarkable things happens. He discovers voices coming from a speck of dust as it floats by his enormous ears. Convinced that there are tiny people on that speck of dust, Horton captures it on the tip of a clover flower and endeavors to communicate with its inhabitants. He succeeds, and begins a conversation with the Mayor of Whoville (Steve Carell), who urges Horton to find a safe place for the speck lest his entire world be wiped out. Horton agrees, but he encounters resistance. The Kangaroo (Carol Burnett) who rules over the jungle is a firm believer in the doctrine that “if you can’t see it, it’s not there,” and she can’t see any people on Horton’s speck, so she hires the vulture Vlad (Will Arnett) to eliminate it. Meanwhile, the Mayor has trouble convincing the Whos that there’s a big elephant in the sky talking to him. Even his wife, Sally (Amy Poehler), is skeptical. Only a Doctor Who named Mary Lou Larue (Isla Fisher) believes him.
With the familiar intonations of Charles Osgood reading passages from the original text, the story progresses reasonably quickly, although there are action sequences that expand beyond Dr. Seuss’s rhymes . There are also two interesting animation-within-animation sequences. The first replicates the look and feel of the book precisely. The second re-invents the story as a dubbed martial arts extravaganza. Adults will likely get more out of these than their children.
Jim Carrey re-invents Horton much as Robin Williams did with the Genie of the Lamp in Disney’s animated Aladdin. Horton’s a bigger-than-life character in more ways than one, and one has to wonder how much of the dialogue was ad-libbed. Steve Carell is more reserved as the Mayor but this goes along with the nature of the part. Will Arnett has fun with Vlad, the vulture with a bad Dracula accent who’s more Wiley Coyote than fearsome predator. Although there are some other famous names in the cast (Carol Burnett, Seth Rogan, Isla Fisher, Amy Poehler), their voices are largely anonymous, which is a good thing.
When it comes to 3D animation, Fox has been the ugly stepchild of the three major studios regularly producing animated features (behind Disney/Pixar and Dreamworks). This represents a major step forward in terms of “look” from the Ice Age movies. The opening Rube Goldberg-inspired sequence is an example of what can be done when creativity meets CGI. It’s a complex and involving tracking shot that shows how the speck is dislodged from its “home” and sent floating in Horton’s direction, and it does an excellent job of drawing the viewer into the movie.
The feature, like the book, toys with the childhood fantasy that there could be worlds within worlds. Who as a child has not wondered whether there could be tiny communities living on dust motes or whether this entire world might be a spinning blue speck in the gargantuan living room of the cosmos? As an adult, it’s easy to dismiss this sort of thing, but it’s the kind of idea that can enrapture and fascinate a child, whose concepts of reality and fantasy haven’t been honed by the harshness of a world where make-believe is discouraged.
Fundamentally, Horton Hears a Who! is a kids’ movie but, as is often the case with today’s animated features, care is taken to include material that works on two levels. This enables adults who accompany their offspring to stave off boredom. While I would not place Horton Hears a Who! on the same level as some of the best animated films, it’s acceptable family fare. There are messages for those who look for such things (about having faith in things that can’t be seen - the religious aspect is hard to ignore - and treating people the same regardless of their differences) but the movie can be enjoyed on a less intellectual level. Few kids who seek out Horton will regret doing so - a view perhaps shared by those who ferry them fro.
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March 18, 2008 at 3:08 pm
What distinguishes “Horton Hears a Who!” from the other recent Dr. Seuss film adaptations —“How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “The Cat in the Hat,” in case you need reminding — is that it is not one of the worst movies ever made. That’s faint praise, I know, and I’m even willing to go a bit further. There are aspects of “Horton,” directed by Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino under the auspices of the 20th Century Fox animation unit responsible for the “Ice Age” movies, that are fresh and enjoyable, and bits that will gratify even a dogmatic and orthodox Seussian.
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Unlike “The Grinch” and “The Cat,” “Horton” does not try to flesh out the good doctor’s graphical world by means of sets, prosthetic makeup and the other accouterments of live-action moviemaking. The animation is free, supple and brightly colored, and the crazy curves and angles that Seuss arranged on the page pop into three dimensions with rubbery energy and elastic wit. Who-ville in particular — that speck-borne town with its spindly machinery and gravity-defying architecture — is a wondrously kinetic place. And the Jungle of Nool, where Horton passes his time and fights for survival of the Whos, is appropriately lush, inviting and strange.
But if “Horton Hears a Who!” offers a showcase of the visual inventiveness and technical flair that characterizes Hollywood-financed children’s animation these days, it also shows some of the limitations of the computer-animation, talking-animal genre. The filmmakers revel in the imaginative freedom their image-making technology affords, and use it with self-confidence and flair, especially in action sequences. (A chase through a field of bright pink clover is lovely and thrilling.)
When it comes to telling the story, however, and drawing out the dimensions of the characters, this “Horton” supplements Dr. Seuss’s fable with pages from the battered, worn-out Hollywood family-film playbook.
All kinds of extraneous elements are added to the story. The Mayor of Who-ville, voiced by Steve Carell, is a beleaguered dad who has trouble communicating with his son, a moody emo boy named Jo-Jo. The problem with this father-son reconciliation narrative is not that it is un-Seussian — though such intergenerational melodrama almost never figured in Dr. Seuss’s work — but that it’s tired and sentimental. You don’t get the sense that the writers (Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul) actually believe in it. It just feels like something they know they’re supposed to do.
The excitable sidekick is another such requirement, and here that duty is taken on by Seth Rogen in the role of Morton, a motor-mouthed mouse who is Horton’s best friend. Mr. Rogen’s casting, like Mr. Carell’s, is less a stunt than a kind of pop-culture insurance clause. Get some box-office-proven comedians to do the voice work — Jonah Hill, Isla Fisher and Dan Fogler make up part of the B team here, in smaller parts — and you can’t fail.
And “Horton Hears a Who!” probably won’t, at least as a commercial proposition. But the star whose presence is clearly meant to be its gold-plated guarantee of success — Jim Carrey as Horton — is also the source of its most egregious failure. Mr. Carrey, who also played the Grinch, can be an agile and restrained actor when the mood strikes him. But the steadfast elephant is a vehicle for an endless, grating avalanche of clowning and riffing. Mr. Carrey not only breaks character with his goofing, he also all but destroys the nobility and sweetness that make Horton such a durable hero of children’s literature.
Horton is loyal, stubborn and compassionate — traits that are all drowned out in the static of Mr. Carrey’s performance and the hectic proliferation of subplots. It is lucky that just enough of the basic story survives to give the movie a touch of gravity and suspense. Horton, hearing the voices of the Whos on their little speck, must protect them from a moralizing kangaroo (Carol Burnett) and her henchfolk, who include a Russian vulture (Will Arnett) and a band of aristocratically named apes.
Meanwhile, the citizens of Who-ville must band together to make their presence known in the larger universe. It’s a marvelous tale, and a hard one to ruin. And the makers of “Horton Hears a Who!” haven’t, though I fear it was not for lack of trying.
DR. SEUSS’ HORTON HEARS A WHO!
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Directed by Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino; written by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio, based on the book by Dr. Seuss; music by John Powell; produced by Bob Gordon; released by 20th Century Fox. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. This film is rated G.
WITH THE VOICES OF: Jim Carrey (Horton), Steve Carell (Mayor), Carol Burnett (Kangaroo), Will Arnett (Vlad), Isla Fisher (Dr. Mary Lou LaRue), Amy Poehler (Sally O’Malley), Seth Rogen (Morton), Jonah Hill (Tommy) and Dan Fogler (Councilman) .
March 18, 2008 at 3:09 pm
March 14, 2008 | It begins with the trajectory of a speck. We watch as it floats through the jungle of Nool, a wisp of nothingness that’s a self-contained planet in its own cosmos. It’s a dot, on a clover. But as Theodore Geisel knew — and any child will affirm — size has no bearing on significance.
The big-screen adaptation of “Horton Hears a Who!” doesn’t have the brisk economy of the original book, but the animated Horton feels nevertheless close to the sweet, quirky heart of Dr. Seuss. It isn’t just an amusing diversion for a rainy Saturday afternoon (which, face it, is the reason kid movies exist) either — it’s a feature-length reparation for the appalling live-action versions of Seuss’ books we’ve endured over the last few years.
The world of children’s literature is rife with chaos and cruelty, and both “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “The Cat in the Hat” focused on rather shady protagonists. Perhaps that’s why those films (and, likewise, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) weren’t runaway hits — the guy who creeps you out for the length of a bedtime story can be downright exhausting for the duration of a film.
“Horton,” in contrast, offers not one but two tender, protective, occasionally befuddled heroes. There’s the pachyderm title character (the voice of Jim Carrey), beloved by the children of Nool and gently insistent that “an elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent.” So what’s an easygoing guy with the biggest ears in the jungle to do when he hears voices coming from a fleck of dust?
And down on that fleck, there’s the mayor of Whoville (Steven Carell), who’s been promoted from his rather minor role in the book to full-fledged costar status. Neither of them is looking for trouble. They certainly aren’t looking for an existential conundrum. Yet there they both are, questioning their sanity, not merely pondering whether something unfathomable is out there, but whether that something believes in them.
The cast, in typical big-budget CGI kid-movie fashion, is composed of genuinely talented comic performers who also happen to be draws to parents, based largely on their R-rated oeuvres. (The film’s references to “Apocalypse Now” and MySpace aren’t for the 5-year-olds either.) “Knocked Up’s” Seth Rogen is Horton’s cautious mouse pal, “Wedding Crashers’” Isla Fisher is a Who scientist, and spouses Will Arnett and Amy Poehler swoop in as a nefarious eagle and the mayor’s doting missus, respectively. In the leads, both Carrey and Carell bring a gentle likability to their often manic, panic-stricken characters. Horton and the mayor are kindred spirits, and the two actors have a warm rapport. Both are yearning for contact.
Why wouldn’t they be, given the wonders of each other’s worlds? One of the greatest pleasures of the film is its visual density. Directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino saturate Horton’s jungle with silvery waters and lush vegetation, and cram Whoville with big-haired characters and complicated contraptions. They create staggeringly beautiful moments, as when Horton confronts a seemingly limitless field of clover, a purple carpet that hides the infinitesimal world of the Whos.
In expanding the tale to movie length, the filmmakers have had to invent several subplots and supporting characters. Purists might take umbrage with a few of the liberties screenwriters Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul have taken, including the loss of most of Seuss’ trademark bumpity rhythm and the inclusion of gags about eating rainbows and pooping butterflies, but most of the new material melds surprisingly well with the author’s to-thine-own-self-be-true ethos.
The pivotal character Jo-Jo is now the mayor’s son. And he isn’t just a taciturn pipsqueak — he’s the sullen, lank-haired Who version of Paul Dano’s mute “Little Miss Sunshine” character. Without saying a word, he clearly loathes the notion of following in his father’s career footsteps. Yet, like his dad, he can’t help looking out at the sky for inspiration and answers — his secret hangout is an observatory.
Meanwhile, back in Nool, the kangaroo (Carol Burnett, vocally chewing the digital scenery with aplomb) is both a neighborhood busybody and a sanctimonious authoritarian who “pouch-schools” her stifled child to shield him from corrupting ideas. “If you can’t see, hear or feel something, it doesn’t exist,” she asserts, and soon she’s turned most of the jungle into a boiling oil-bearing mob. The unknown, in their society, is a dangerous thing, and the consequence of inquiry is destruction. When Horton, master of meta, counters that perhaps this existence is just a speck on someone else’s clover, he offers his young audience its first taste of philosophy.
For all of “Horton’s” ideological musing, though, the film never strays too long from the kid-friendly imperative for slapstick. Staples fly into faces; characters catapult into cliffs. There are also moments of pure inspiration, as when Horton heroically imagines himself the wide-eyed, not-quite-synced-up star of an anime adventure. If Pascal’s “Pensees” were a Looney Toon, it’d look a lot like this.
The film is no overcaffeinated Narnia-like religious allegory, though. Horton and the mayor aren’t hearing things. When the burden of proof falls to each of them, they scramble to produce hard evidence. And it’s a nice touch, one not in the original story, that the first person to believe the mayor is a scientist. “Horton” may owe a debt to the notion of childlike belief, but any movie that fills Whoville with ladders that look like DNA strands and shows sound waves pulsing through the atmosphere is a movie that celebrates reason. It’s probably not a coincidence that it’s from the creators of the “Ice Age” films, which gave pretty wide latitude to Darwinism. It’s not about faith, really. It’s about the hope none of us ever outgrow — the wish that when we shout to the skies or to ourselves that “We are here, we are here, we are here,” someone, somewhere is listening.
March 18, 2008 at 3:14 pm
DR. SEUSS’ HORTON HEARS A WHO!
by Matthew Sorrento
(2008-03-17)
2008, Rated G, 88 minutes, Twentieth Century Fox
Of all the Dr. Seuss classics, Twentieth Century Fox made a suitable choice to adapt “Horton Hears a Who!” to the big screen. This 1954 tale not only creates a dual world of life-size and minuscule characters – i.e., the Whos of Whoville, who inhabit a city situated on a mote of dust as if it were a planet. The allegories of this tale are made accessible for young readers. As Horton, the happy-trotting elephant of the Jungle of Nool, discovers Whoville with a very keen ear, Theodor Geisel’s (Dr. Seuss) simple metaphysical tale inspires kids to wonder about the world around them, especially everything they cannot see. In the 1950s, as TV arrived to American homes, Geisel encouraged kids to go outside and let their minds illustrate for them. Sources as wide-ranging as the “Twilight Zone” and the 2001 Farrelly brothers animated film “Osmosis Jones” owe a debt to Geisel’s light-handed metaphor, which Chuck Jones made into a cartoon for television in 1970.
And the thematic richness doesn’t end there: when Horton spreads word of the newfound city and vows to protect it, others from the Jungle of Nool treat him like a dangerous rebel, one whose fantasies will ruin the minds of children. Horton becomes the target of something like a witch hunt – in a book appearing after the McCarthy hearings, let’s not forget – and must make the members of Whoville heard, or they’ll be destroyed. In a story about inspiring wonder, Horton’s persecutors symbolize influences out to kill youthful imagination.
This production delivers “Horton” as a richly animated tale. In the opening scenes, Horton (voiced by Seuss-vet Jim Carrey, earning his keep with vigor) appears lively enough that kids will forget that he’s an illustration. The real treat comes when Whoville appears onscreen, and classic Seuss is brought to the world of modern animation. The Whos have an endearing stiffness that the storybook characters suggest, when it would have been all too easy to embellish them into something alien to the source material. (Think of the recent big screen “Garfield,” who couldn’t be a distant cousin of the original – or even Jim Carrey’s Grinch, for that matter.) This Whoville is the bustling little city that we all read about, led by the lovable Mayor (Steve Carell, matching Carrey in vocal umph), with his dozens of children and an inclination for slipping up.
Even if Horton’s world can’t shine like Whoville, this movie’s visuals keeps things vivid, while digital animation is so often crisp, precise, and cold. For adults, the images of Whoville grow commonplace after awhile, similarly to how the visual inspiration in “The Simpsons” movie couldn’t last its feature length. And hearing Steve Carell’s frantic calls to save Whoville will hit a sour note for older viewers, as it reminds us of “Evan Almighty’s” attempts to deal with a flood in that overproduced wreck of a film. But all this won’t mean a thing to the kids, who at the screening I attended were dazzled by the interchange from Horton’s world to Whoville, as one strives to help the other. The young viewers cheered their way to the triumph, and I can imagine them looking out of car windows in wonder as they rode home from the theater.
March 18, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Movie Review: ‘Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who’
Animated adaptation will have whole family saying Who-who-ray!
Friday, March 14, 2008
By Barbara Vancheri, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Blue Sky Studios
Kangaroo (voice of Carol Burnett) gives Horton (voice of Jim Carrey) a piece of her mind.A person’s a person, no matter how small, but a new Dr. Seuss movie should … shout come one and come all? Not cast a pall? Make you feel tall? Just be a ball?
And “Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!” is largely that, particularly when it ventures into Who-ville, where the whirl of activity is wondrous. It’s hard to know where to look, when almost every spot on the screen is filled with visual delights.
Take the kitchen of the mayor (voice of Steve Carell) of Who-ville and his wife. They have 96 daughters and one son and, at breakfast, the children perch on chairs attached to a conveyer belt that rotates around the table. You barely have time to see what’s on the plates — green eggs on one, ham on the next, for instance.
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‘Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!’
3 stars = Good
Ratings explained
Starring: Voices of Jim Carrey, Steve Carell, Carol Burnett.
Rating: G.
Web site: ‘Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who’
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Although “Horton” tinkers slightly with Theodor Seuss Geisel’s 1954 book, it remains faithful to its original drawings, spirit, message and celebration of imagination and respect for others.
Then as now, the story is about an elephant named Horton who finds, safeguards, loses and defends a speck of dust harboring a microscopic place called Who-ville.
Unlike past Seuss projects that were done as cartoons or with live action or both, as with “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” this is the first computer-generated animated feature. Directed by Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino, it’s from Blue Sky Studios, which produced “Ice Age” and its sequel (another is due in July 2009) along with “Robots.”
Speaking for its three lead characters are Carell as the mayor; Jim Carrey as Horton, the sweet, fun-loving elephant who resides in the jungle of Nool; and Carol Burnett as the sour, scolding kangaroo who doesn’t believe in anything she cannot see, hear or feel and wants to set Horton straight.
The kangaroo also objects to children having freedom or flexing their imagination and says if the jungle residents question authority, that will lead to defiance and anarchy.
The movie cuts back and forth between the two worlds of the jungle and Who-ville and introduces the supporting characters from the book, notably the Wickersham monkeys and Vlad Vlad-I-Koff, an eagle willing to do the jungle’s dirty work.
To fill out an 88-minute running time and keep the little ones happy, the movie adds a mouse named Morton (voice of Seth Rogen) and young jungle residents who look like plush toys come to life but not always in a good way.
For slightly older filmgoers, it drops in references to phones and Facebook friends and allows Carrey to imitate Henry Kissinger, President Kennedy and rework a signature line from “Apocalypse Now.”
Its most delightful scenes come in Who-ville. In the 2000 “Grinch” movie, the Whos were odd-looking creatures; here, they’re the most imaginatively conceived and rendered, with careful details such as the silky fur trim on their clothes and the way 96 girls are bunked at bedtime.
Who-ville trumps the jungle of Nool but the movie is no “Ratatouille,” the new gold standard for animation. It also falls back on that old standard of a sing-along for a closer.
Still, it calls to mind an old Geisel pledge to parents: “You make ‘em, I amuse ‘em.” Half a century later, that promise holds true.
Post-Gazette movie editor Barbara Vancheri can be reached at bvancheri@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1632.
April 8, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who is classic, i forgot how much that guy packed into such simple storylines… they didn’t add much to the original story either except for the usual Jim Carreyisms.