After the miserable and extremely painful train-wreck of a live-action Seuss adaptation infamously known as "The Cat In the Hat", Dr. Seuss' widow Audrey Giesel was so enraged of how the film tainted her husbands timeless story (as I'm sure every person who has respect for Seuss’ work would feel) that when hearing a sequel was going to be made based on the book "The Cat In The Hat Comes Back" (I don't dare wish to imagine seeing little people being made-up to look as hideous as Myers), she forced Hollywood to stop making any more live-action films based on her husband's work. This, however, didn't stop Hollywood from producing Seuss films all together because in their minds "if we can't turn this weirdo's basic stories into money-making sell-outs full of pop culture references, dirty humor, and modern slang to please the kids as we expand more on an imperfect story in live-action; will just simply repackage all of it in animation that will look less obvious and offensive because we can now make the characters and backgrounds look almost exactly like how they were drawn which will cause kids to instantly believe that this is how the world of Seuss truly is". "Horton Hears a Who!" became the start of this new trend of Seuss films that most people consider to be the least bad out of the Seuss films that Hollywood's produced after Seuss' television specials. How did Audrey react toward this new beginning of film representations to her late husbands work, she hated it, only this time instead of preventing Hollywood from never making another Seuss film ever again, she went to "Illumination Entertainment" to adapt "The Lorax", and she loved it (I guess the film quoting Seuss at the end had won her over). I personally have never watched the film until I decided to review it, so I don't have any nostalgic memories involving the picture like the other Seuss films except for the marketing and my friends talking about it. Is this film really the least bad out of the Seuss films as many people have claimed with some good in it, or is it a well-animated piece of elephant turd that's a little worse than the other Seuss films underneath the crappiest one of them all "The Cat In the Hat"? ON WITH THE REVIEW!
I'm not going to waste my time writing up the plot of the story since I described it in my previous review, which brings me once again to start talking about everyone's favorite (and most likely only) Seuss elephant, Horton.
Coming off the heels of the great Hans Conried who previously voiced Horton, which actor did Hollywood cast to give the character the same subtle warmth, heart, and dignity to this beloved elephant as what Conried brought, Jim Carrey! Why, well theoretically speaking considering how he proved to be a better lead than Mike Myers in the Seuss film that started a short-lived live-action trend, the safest bet seemed to be to hire the lead actor that got the first Seuss film "right" in their first effort of making an hour and a half animated movies. Plus this seemed like the perfect opportunity to give Carrey his start in voice acting given that he's practically a living cartoon character. Was it the best casting choice? Was Jim Carrey subtle as the Grinch? He's less annoying than he was as the Grinch. He doesn't resort to giving the character a voice as excessively goofy as the Horton in the "Merrie Melodies" cartoon, bbbuuut he's still pretty distastefully loony. For the majority of the film, the character of Horton spends most of his time acting like a buffoon, getting into foolish mishaps, and forcefully referencing pop culture, where none of it is charming and rarely funny. All subtlety, wonder, and innocence that were previously given to the character are thrown so deep in the clover-field that by the time that those characteristics are found they'd be dead. You see, Horton is so idiotic about finding a world on a dust speck that he fools around with it, not quickly realizing the dangers that his joking around may bring, even when after knowing about the society living inside it. This, my fellow readers, isn't the only time Horton's encountered a small society either, because much, much later on in the film, it is revealed that he accidentally sat on a fly city and killed all those that lived there. Now I'd give it some kind of credit if this past incident is what leads to Horton to act protective towards the dust speck, but it's nothing more than a poorly written joke that's not given any kind of emotional depth. The film gracefully gives Horton some quieter moments and shows him being determined to keep the Who's safe, unfortunately, those moments mostly just show it than it does emote to it since it has to show some kind connection to Horton's relationship to the Who world. Even when Horton says two of his iconic lines from the source material they feel only present as fan service to those who adore Seuss' books and cartoons than coming off as naturally touching because you believe that's what the character thinks and feels. But he doesn't for how much the film is too busy making him out to be an obnoxious clown just to entertain the kids, thus lacking the emotional connection that's supposed to be present with this character.
A criticism that I pointed out when reviewing the original short is Conried's lack of variety with changing his voice when given the task to voice three completely different characters, as well as the odd choice of casting animator Chuck Jones as little Jojo that overall brought a slight vibe of feeling the actors recording their lines for how distracting that these decisions were. Apart of me didn't think that the voice acting wouldn't be much of a problem here, but honestly, it's worse. How can that be? Well as obvious that Horton, Dr. Hoovey, and the narrator are all voiced by the same guy, Conried's acting along with the rest of the cast (except Jones as Jojo) still nicely matched the design, tone, and mannerisms that are supposed to be brought to these characters, making it seem believable that this is how they're supposed to sound and act. The big named celebrities cast here like Carrey, Carol Burnett, Steve Carrel, and Seth Rogen appear to be playing more like themselves and the type of characters they're usually typecasted as in Hollywood movies than feeling like that this is how the characters are supposed to sound and act like. I'm always aware that these characters are being voiced by these excellent performers as I feel them recording and reading their lines in a booth. The primary reason why they don't emerge as the characters is mainly due to the fact that all the characters are completely exaggerated with little subtlety and emotion given to them, and because that the actors are directed to ham-up their performances the same way as most of the actors were in the previous Seuss films, they lose track of the emotions that we're supposed to get out of these characters. Therefore, making them seem like that these Seuss characters are now suddenly doing a comical reenactment to their own story by impersonating celebrities that they somehow know about.
The closest that an actor in this film tries to provide any kind of subtlety is Steve Carell as the Who that Horton interacts with. The Who that Horton talked to in the original cartoon was a Professor that the Whos had trouble believing; this film takes the character back to what he was from the story which was being the Mayor of "Whoville", and that's completely fine. Carell seems constantly stressed out and on edge with everything regarding running the city, trying to protect it from disaster, connecting with his very large family, and getting physical abuse from the misfortunes caused by the speck of dust's encounters in the Jungle of Nool. He certainly seems to give more of a damn with saving his city when compared to Carrey as Horton. The Mayor even does something that Dr. Hoovey didn't do in the original and that's attempting to prove to the Who's about their world. The problem, however, is that Carell comes off like any other awkward character getting into bad luck that he's played before only this time made to resemble a Who which makes the character nothing special for how blandly uninteresting he is. On top of it, the relationship that he has with Horton though is kind of there, it's not as intriguing as it was in the original. What made their relationship in the original so appealing was how they're both misfits in their own community where the only people that felt and understood them were each other who were both not part of the same world. In this version on the other hand, Horton has a best friend and is a teacher to little animals (that's only shown once in the film) that enjoy being around him, while the Mayor is respected by the Who's in “Whoville”, and loved by his family. They're not alone so their relationship doesn't feel as deep as the original was, and aren't shown to be relating or understanding each other on a personal level since most of their dialogue is just them goofing around and figuring out how to protect the city to just move the plot forward. The relationship is so bland that when the clover is dropped into the Clover-field, I'm thinking more logically by believing that the Clover-field is the perfect place to keep them safe since that's Horton's goal, instead of emotionally wanting to see Horton find them so he can be with his only friend.
Apart from saving the city, the only person that the Mayor is shown trying to connect with from an emotional stand-point is his son Jojo. Jojo in the original was just a small random kid that was the only Who to not make a sound; Jojo here is the Mayor's only son who always keeps quiet. It's an interesting idea that sounds welcoming to flesh-out a character that had a small but important role, except that it all gets ruined when Hollywood decides to give him the same pretty boy treatment to make young girls squee as they would later do with the Onceler. He's not a regular quiet kid; he's now an emo boy who doesn't show any emotion outside of being depressed and annoyed. It's mentioned that he doesn't want to speak because he doesn't want to offend his dad by telling him that being the mayor is not his dream career, which I don't buy at all that he would feel this way given his stereotypical I don't care emo attitude as he distances himself from his father. It's shown in the climax that its music that he wants to do, but it doesn't feel effective for the lack of tension that he has with his father for how emotionless and silly the relationship is, and his skills and reasons of wanting to be a musician are so underdeveloped that when it's revealed it comes out of nowhere. The only reason the musician element of the character exists is that Jesse McCarthy was hired to voice the character (how low can the decisions towards Jojo's character go). Having the character mute is more than enough to build up a character arc, there was no need to make him emo and have him wanting to pick a different career path that his father wanted him to take, resulting with these alterations not furthering or enhancing the story in any special way. Jojo's nothing more than a product of Hollywood's desperate attempt to create hot young boys for young girls to fantasize about as they do with Edward Cullen from "Twilight", or any male pop stars that Disney loves to exploit, only he's an unholy combination of both.
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The other Who's we meet in "Whoville" thankfully don't cross that line of being inhumanely mean and joyful to the point where it becomes torturous as they were in the live-action film version of "The Grinch", but they're nearly as dull as Jojo is, as they all pretty much contain one personality trait through a performance as bland as Carell's. They're not on the same level of offensively bad to appeal to the masses like Jojo (except for the punk Who), there's just hardly anything fun or memorable about them. The only real offensive quality that the Who's have is how stupid they are. In the original, the Who's felt and saw nothing abnormal when Horton would rescue and interact with the dust speck giving them a reason to not believe in Dr. Hoovey's discovery until it was dropped in the Clover-field where their city gets destroyed. Being that the film takes the advantage of having more disasters happening to Whoville prior to the Clover-field incident such as night and day constantly switching when the speck is put in the shade, and the ground always shaking causing buildings and objects to fly up, you'd think that the Who's would be warier and possibly consider the Mayor's warnings despite his reasons sounding outlandish, but instead they all shrug it off never questioning about it, and believe he's a fool until it's too late. I can point every depiction of the Who's for being either cheery, innocent, wicked, and feeling like a welcoming yet not so perfect community. The Who's in this film earns the title of being the dumbest depiction of them for their stupidity, and having tacky trends that are trying to con young audiences into believing that they're awesome and timeless. Still, while the Who's themselves suck, "Whoville" itself despite having some weak modern-day commentary ("Whophones", and "Whospace") is much more visually fun to look at compared to "Whoville" in the original cartoon. Unlike how the original cartoon was limited in exploiting the amount of creativity that the original Grinch cartoon was able to show, this film takes nearly every chance it can when showing how the Who's live and interact in a busy environment full of wacky and unique contraptions for them to work, play, and communicate while containing tons of little Easter Eggs referencing Seuss' other works. This is exactly what I wanted to see in the original short! The imagination given to this world is nearly up to par with the classic animated Grinch.
The Jungle of Nool itself has a bit more personality as well. How the jungle looked in the original wasn't bad, it just seemed like every other animated jungle you'd see at the time that the short was made. It was practically the jungle where George of the Jungle would swing and crash into trees only made to resemble Seuss' art style. The Jungle of Nool here looks like a jungle that you'd want to explore for how gigantic and full detail it is. It has trees that you feel like you could touch; mountains as tall as Mount Crumpit; a Clover-field that stretches out for miles and miles that seem fun and soft to frolic in; areas that are ominous for how dark and gloomy they look; it just teleports you into this world the same way as how "Whoville" did. And instead of seeing gossiping birds as the only residents outside of the antagonists and protagonist, we see all kinds of different wild animals and bugs that add to its wildlife feel. However, in terms of character, they're as appealing as the Who's. Horton has a mouse for a best friend voiced by Seth Rogen, who is nothing more than just a rodent version of himself just minus being funny. The gossiping birds are just there, And the young animals that Horton teaches are forgettable with the exception of the tiny fluffy yellow Yak Katie. She is as scary as the Who's in the live-action Grinch, and Mike Myers and the Things in "The Cat and the Hat" for her awkwardly strange personality with no life, and having expressions so deranged that she looks like a soulless demon from the pits of hell, only made to look "cute and cuddly".
Jane Kangaroo is voiced by Carol Burnett whose character in this version comes across as a little more humanized than the character was in the original cartoon. She has that sour personality that we associate the character for, but she also acts a little fairer by giving Horton a few chances to rid the dust speck before taking drastic measures and is concerned that Horton's actions is brainwashing the children than just changing their politics. It sounds like they fleshed out her character despite Carol Burnett sounding like that she’s playing Miss Hannigan in animated form just without being insane, but the changes barely make sense. She wants Horton to rid that dust speck and admit that no one's on it, so why doesn't Horton just tell her that he's getting rid of it himself and promises he won't talk about it again once his task is finished? Judging by how reasonable she can be when compared to the original character being completely stubborn, it'd seem like the proper compromise, and if Horton should violate refusing to leave them behind that would result with her and the Wickershams taking care of it themselves starting with the Clover-field obstacle. It would be as much filler as almost everything in The Grinch with Jim Carrey, but the change in the plot will make enough sense for it to fit the scenes that resemble the source material. But nope, the film much rather pads things out with scenes of comedy that are pointless and stupid. And speaking of stupid, her motivation of protecting the kids from Horton's actions doesn't make much sense either or feels needed. The film already has her being concerned with Horton changing their way of life, and yet she shows concern over the kids too? I guess it's because that Horton telling a young youth about another world existing will cause them to rebel against society as they grow older, which seems like a valid reason for her to get worried about except that the kids seem to be using this information to play pretend and use their imagination as opposed to actually believing that the world's that they've created actually exists which they'll undoubtedly grow-out of in time (well with the exception of Katie). And because Jane hardly shows any care for kids since she's too busy controlling her own son, I don't see why she would care so much. I know her son tries to take part in pretending too thus giving her a reason to stop Horton, but she's always been keeping him away from the kids and disciplining him to listen to her at all times, so I don't see how that would set her off. Besides when her son is being threatened with death when she’s making a deal with a deadly animal that wants him in exchange she seems less concerned for how he's feeling, and wonders if she should sacrifice him for the community. Care for the children my foot! Having an elephant acting strange is enough for her to draw suspicion and worry, all this other stuff involving the kids and her son has no real purpose in the overall story.
The Wickersham Brothers, who I loved so much in the 70s cartoon, don't really do much here! They throw bananas, stand by the sour Kangaroo, and rope and cage Horton as they try to boil the dust speck, but they aren't the ones who steal the clover, don't talk as much, or have much of a personality except to be obnoxious while looking like bullies. Their redesigns aren’t that creative or mischievous looking neither, as they appear more apish than they did in the original. The original Wickersham’s contained the same amount of fur as the Grinch had, and were given big and bright mean green eyes with dark shades around them that resembled a mask that a burglar would wear. The new Wickershams barley contain anything imaginative or distinctive in their designs. It seems that more time attention towards the animals working for Jane Kangaroo went to the giant black bird Vlad, probably because he's voiced by another big named celebrity Will Arnett. Out of all the stars casted in the film, Arnett is the only actor who emerges himself as the character by providing a dark Russian accent that's unrecognizable and matches with the character's sinister nature. The design that Vlad given is also the kind of intimidating look that I expected the Wickershams to have. He's now a vulture instead of an eagle to make him appear more deadly, and carries a nasty face of evil as he spreads out his long and large crooked wings. It's quite terrifying! The only major downside is he's mostly played for comedy. His character is actually weak and tries as hard as he can to hide his foolish personality by looking scary towards the residents around him, so as threatening as he seems, he's not that way at heart, which in the end kills a promising character update.
Much like "The Lorax", the only thing that the film does better when compared to the original and the Seuss films before it is the animation. The animation in the 70s cartoon is still good, it's just the animation here appears to be less limited and has a great amount of detail. Everything looks like something that you can touch and want to feel (such as the Clover, the feathers from the Vulture); the movements are very flowing, full of energy, and well timed; and the animators are now able to get creative with its worlds, gags, and creatures without having any restraint. It also gives the speck of dust interacting with Horton's world plenty of weight of bringing the sense that the Who's world is in jeopardy for its size and scale of the dangers happening around them to make the stakes feel higher than it ever was before. And when we see Horton in the clover-field tossing the clovers into stacks, they look and feel vulnerable as if they can collapse or blow away at any second that will cause Horton to start all over again making the viewer become just as stressed as he is, instead of the stacks looking neat and nearly as solid as a rock. Beyond that, the film occasionally gives us some 2-D animation for whenever we enter Horton's thoughts that are as nicely animated as they are in CG. The animation is fantastic, it just upsets me that it's wasted with so many scenes of unfunny slapstick and poor visual gags to prevent me from fully appreciating it. Exactly like every other Seuss movie, this film is not subtle or executes its message at a mature level to make it stand-tall, it's mostly focused on being over the top obnoxious with its humor, and referencing whatever's popular at the time to please it's young crowd when it clearly isn't needed it. There were some visual jokes that I thought were neat like Horton's trunk acting like a shower-head, and the Who's interacting in the snow only to find it gone as they're still playing in it; and I'll admit that I did find a one or two lines to be funny. But on the whole, it's annoying and doesn't fit with Seuss' style, where the majority of it takes away the emotional element for how goofy it is, and is used as filler to pad out the film's run time, like Horton crossing a rocky old bridge, or him chasing after the speck of dust as he overcomes obstacles and randomly blurts out references to pop culture.
And let's get to the references to pop culture. There's plenty of dialogue and moments that horrifically shoehorn them in, but we get two whole scenes that show it at its worst. The film is not a musical, and yet at the very last scene of the movie, the film randomly decides to have the characters dance and sing "Can't Fight This Feeling" by REO Speedwagon. At least in the previous Seuss films that awkwardly phoned in musical numbers, they were either original, or songs from the source material. This film enters a whole new level of bad in the Seuss movies by giving these iconic characters an 80s rock tune that doesn't fit within their world given that this is supposed to represent Seuss. It's certainly not the worst, I'll still never forget the sick lyrics, the drastic changes in music styles, and terrifying visuals during the song sequence when The Cat In the Hat sings about fun; it's just that the choice of throwing in an unoriginal song for the movie is the last thing that I would expect from these films. But it's not as outlandish when the film decides to stop dead in its tracks to pointlessly become an anime for 30 seconds or so. Earlier in the film when Horton imagines what tiny people calling for help could be on the falling dust speck, the style for his thought are designed to resemble Seuss' illustrations which is a clever way of referencing the original art style and still have it connect to the story. Then later on in the film when Horton is determined to bring the clover to the cave up in the mountains, he imagines himself to be a powerful ninja warrior, where his thoughts are now designed to a resemble an anime. WHY THE FLIPPIN' HELL DOES A DR. SEUSS MOVIE NEED ANIME REFERENCES?! It's stupid, it's not funny, it's offensively annoying, and it makes no sense! There's no rhyme or reason for it to be in the movie, so why does it exist?! Because kids love anime, and since the film is so desperate to get kids to like this movie by changing and adding things in for the worst, they decided to forcefully add-in a popular genre of entertainment without caring how pointlessly out of place it is!
OVERALL THOUGHTS
I do agree that this is the least offensive of the Seuss films, for being less mean-spirited, scary, annoying, and insulting; and having animation that I'll argue is better than the animation in "The Lorax" for the amount of life, detail, and creativity that went into it. HOWEVER, it's still as bad as all the other Seuss films crapped out from Hollywood. It lacks emotion, subtlety, and thought since it's too busy being crazy and loud to keep the kids mindlessly entertained; the changes to the story don't make sense or feel needed; the actors voicing these timeless characters sound and act way too much as themselves where they don't emerge as the characters; the jokes are stupid; and you can easily spot the fingerprints from the Hollywood executives all over the film for whenever there's a reference to pop culture to appeal to the masses or a modernized attempt to make it "timeless". I don't care if the experience wasn't as painful when compared to the other Seuss films! Just because something hurts less that doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt. For all I care, this film can be burned along with the rest of the Seuss films. There's clearly no respect or passion in any of these films to represent the works of a great man, and the fact that Hollywood is still continuing with this trend of showing little to no promise of giving the kids something smart and challenging while paying respect to a children's author that will live on forever without resorting to any childish and modern gimmicks leaves me in pure disgust! And as I sit there cringing, the memories of me being manipulated by this junk in the past (even when I first wrote my reviews on my Facebook page in 9th grade) will forever haunt me until the day I die.
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