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Movie Review: Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who
'Horton' turns into something special
By John Wirt
jwirt@theadvocate.com
Advocate movie critic
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A 2003 live action-version of Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat starring Mike Myers fell flat. A 2000 version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! starring Jim Carrey teetered on disaster.
But the Carrey-starring Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears A Who!, the latest big-screen version of a story by the classic children’s author and illustrator, is miles above previous Dr. Seuss adaptations. Carrey’s voice performance as Horton the elephant, however, isn’t the reason why.
Horton Hears A Who!, from Twentieth Century Fox Animation and Blue Sky Studios, the studio and animation company that produced the Ice Age movies, wisely scraps the live action and prosthetics seen in the earlier Dr. Seuss movies, trading them for a computer-animated world that believably encompasses the jungle of Nool and city of Who-ville.
Blue Sky’s animation skills have soared since the first Ice Age film. The people of Who-Ville and their environs are detailed, fluid and distinctly Seussian. The same goes for the animals who populate the jungle of Nool, including Horton, the story’s hero, and the manipulative Jane Kangaroo, the story’s prime villain.
Despite the advantages above, the filmmakers are still stuck with the challenge of transforming a small children’s book into a feature-length film. They broaden the story with action sequences that aren’t so thrilling, dry patches of padding and contemporary touches that may look or sound cute in 2008 but also fly against Dr. Seuss’ classic vision.
Whatever updates the screenwriters add will eventually date their rendition of Horton Hears A Who! The story would be better served by a half-hour adaptation rather than an 86-minute feature, but maybe there’s simply too much profit potential in producing a feature for filmmakers to instead make something as perfect as the 26-minute-long TV special, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, that debuted in 1966. Horton Hears A Who! got the same 26-minute, Chuck Jones-directed TV treatment in 1970.
Carrey’s oddly ordinary performance as Horton is overshadowed by two of his co-stars. Veteran comedienne Carol Burnett provides the voice of Jane Kangaroo, a character who fancies herself queen of the jungle. When Jane learns that Horton is telling the other animals that he heard a voice coming from a speck of dust lodged in a piece of clover, she decides Horton is a heretical threat to the jungle community.
At first, the bullying, alarmist kangaroo threatens Horton. When it becomes clear that he will bravely defend the tiny people of Who-Ville, she incites the jungle inhabitants against him. As computer-animated heavies go, Burnett’s kangaroo, a browbeating, self-righteous demagogue if ever there was one, is among the best.
Other heads-above voice performances come from Steve Carell (his previous computer-animation includes the great Hammy, the squirrel in Over the Hedge) as the beleaguered mayor of Who-Ville and Seth Rogen as Horton’s loyal ally, Morton the mouse.
Despite the stretch of adapting Horton’s tale to a feature movie, the strength of Dr. Seuss’ original story and the worlds he created, plus some particularly winning characters, put Horton Hears A Who! over the top.
