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Movies Forum Index » Movie Reviews Forum » Review: Horton Hears a Who (2008)
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 Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 5:40 pm |
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Horton Hears a Who
a little review by Sam Osborn
Each Winter, as Christmas draws near, my family blows the dust from
our VCR and settles in to Chuck Jones' 1966 TV special "How the Grinch
Stole Christmas." The glow of Christmas' past roll out with this
twenty-six minute animation, but it's sincerity that opens the
floodgates of nostalgia. Sincerity--genuine, heartfelt sincerity--is
no longer paramount to animation. Projects like Shrek and Cars, Surfs
Up and Robots, they rely on suggestive jokes or complicated pop
culture references to entertain their adult audiences. They defect
from their own storylines, scared of boring an over-stimulated young
adult generation, copping out with easy one-liners. Pixar can still
spin the occasional gem of sincerity, harking back to the Disney 2D
pictures from that wondrous era. But Cinderella can no longer pine for
the Prince and twirl in her glass slippers. The slippers have turned
to stilettos, her dress to Prada, and now she's worried about her
virginity, conveyed through the overt imagery of cherries.
But Dr. Seuss is the very definition of sincerity. Zany and insane,
his works play towards the expansion of the reader's imagination,
rocketing so far from reality that pop culture references are as gassy
and lame as the swizzled clouds above. Horton Hears a Who understands
this principle well enough--which is lucky, since this might have been
the third strike for Dr. Seuss adaptations. The Elephants and Whos of
Whoville are lovingly rendered, tracing all the whimsical lines and
colors laid out in the book. Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul, the
screenwriters, have stretched the story reasonably, keeping to
appropriate Seussical whimsy. And the cast pulls through admirably,
Steve Carell and Seuss veteran, Jim Carrey, flexing their comic
muscles for their vocal performances as the Mayor of Whoville and
Horton the elephant. But it's all not quite Seuss. Horton breaks it
down to a rap beat, one of the Mayor's daughters wants a cell phone.
The story is stretched by an anime sequence to elbow out 88 minutes of
running length. It's fine and often hilarious, charming in its zany
colors, but we still don't buy it as a Seuss creation. It's not as
genuine, not as original. Not as insane.
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