Tuesday 18 May 2010

Movie 138: Horton Hears a Who

Horton the elephant (Jim Carrey) is a free spirit, which gets under the noise of the Kangaroo that rules the forest. Just go with it. One day while Horton is taking a bath he hears a voice come from a small speck floating by. He discovers when he finally talks to the mayor (Steve Carell) that the Who’s live on that speck, and sets out to find them a safe place to live while the kangaroo tries to destroy the speck. Because if you can’t see, hear or touch something it doesn’t exist.

So this film is about belief, imagination and to let kids know that they’re important even though they are little. All good stuff. And by belief I don’t particularly mean religion, and I’m not sure if Seuss did or didn’t.

I’m not sure if I read any Dr Seuss as a kid but I’ve seen a couple of the films now and I like them. Not a huge fan of the ridiculous words but this is light on that, and the rhyming. I don’t think anyone could take an hour and a half or rhyming.

The animation is beautiful and done in the style of the Seuss books for the most part. For big fans there lots of things in the background that you can spot and get excited about. And for the rest of us it just looks great.

There’s also a lot of goofy humour in here as well as flat out stupid jokes. Jim Carrey obviously hams it up at times, even in an animation, but its good Carrey hamming opposed to the over egged stuff he can do some times. Steve Carell may have ad libbed now and again too, but he’s great as the mayor. And all the other voice actors are good too.

By the way, if your wondering how you can ad lib in an animation they record the voices first….

This made plenty of money so hopefully there will be more Seuss animations on the way someday. They’ve already made plenty of models after all. This one is fun for all the family, will have the kids rolling about with laughter and keep the grown ups entertained. Go check it out.

Next up: Lesbian Vampire Killers. So not one for the kids then.

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