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It’s a carefree jungle life for Horton (voiced by Jim Carrey), a young elephant who loves to swim and play with some of the smaller residents of his world. Except for Morton the mouse (Seth Rogen), I can’t place any of the other species, but they all seem cute and round. As in the original Dr. Seuss story, they all hang out together with nothing much to spoil their fun.
When a yelping speck floats by, Horton’s exceptional hearing picks up the sound, and he’s convinced that tiny beings live on the speck. Concerned, he chases it and nestles it on a flowering clover. Horton’s mission is to find a safe place for this micro-world. His life now has purpose.
Trouble comes in the form of snooty Kangaroo (Carol Burnett), who sort of rules the Jungle of Nool, throwing her weight around as she sees fit. When she sees Horton talking to a flower, she decides to nip his foolishness in the bud by taking away the flower and destroying it. And that starts a chain reaction of evasion and pursuit that involves a really ugly bird of prey (Will Arnett) and a hooting rabble of monkeys.
Meanwhile, on the tiny town/speck of Whoville, the Mayor (Steve Carell) stays in close touch with Horton by means of a Seussian ear-horn thingy. The Mayor’s got troubles of his own: his sullen son, JoJo (Jessie McCartney), 96 attention-seeking daughters, and the city council calling him a boob. They don’t believe he can speak to an elephant, whatever that might be, and they want the town’s annual celebration to go on, come hell or boiling Beezelnut juice.
The works of Dr. Seuss have been notoriously hard to translate into film. Live action has been tried with varying success, but, this time out, computer animation seems just the right choice. The assorted Whos and animals—especially Horton—have a rubbery, comical look and motion, of which the late Doctor would likely approve. As a Seuss fan since the age of four, I know I do.
I preferred the Whoville segments to the jungle ones, since Whoville has the better contraptions—like the slingshot device that JoJo uses to ascend the great observatory in town. But the jungle can be beautiful, too—especially the breathtaking field of pink clover that Horton must search, flower by flower, to find his lost world.
Mixed in with the computer effects are some old-fashioned, two-dimensional sequences, the best of which has Horton imagining himself a ninja hero, complete with stilted dialogue and hokey Japanese cartoon techniques.
Given the challenges of expanding a short story into a big movie, the film’s creators did a remarkable job. The writing is clever, the voices inspired. Even the simple bromide, “a person’s a person, no matter how small,” resonated with my son and me, as we watched it together. A nice message, an entertaining movie, and a tribute to the genius of Seuss.
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