On Screen
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!
BY Adam Nayman March 14, 2008 00:03
To say that Horton Hears a Who! is the most successful of the new Dr. Seuss adaptations is damning with faint praise: pretty much anything would look good after the eye-and-soul molesting abominations of The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. And faint praise is all this CGI animation deserves — its fidelity to Seuss’ dignity-for-all allegory is admirable, but the execution is negligible.
Jim Carrey has never done a cartoon voice-over before — the very idea seems redundant. His work as Horton (for those of you who don’t have, or never were, children, Horton is a jungle-dwelling elephant whose massive ears detect a noise emanating from a speck perched atop a clover – evidence of an entire speck-based civilization known as Whoville!) is generally muted, with a few Robin Williams-style digressions meant to amuse older viewers (which they don’t). Steve Carrell (who was hilarious voicing an agitated squirrel in the underrated Over the Hedge) speaks for the mayor of Whoville, struck dumb at the discovery of a benign supreme being: that’d be Horton, who charges himself with the duty of looking after the speck even though his friends (and enemies) think he’s a lunatic.
The wit and humanity of the premise are entirely attributable to the late Mr. Geisel; the clutter — a strained manga parody, relentless slapstick action — is entirely attributable to the filmmakers. Horton Hears a Who! has been produced by the folks responsible for the Ice Age series, and the animation is comparably busy and unpleasing. Two brief, near-subliminal inserts of the book’s artwork remind us that the good Doctor’s pretzelly poetry benefitted from minimal visual accompaniment — but nobody ever lined their pockets by leaving well enough alone.
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