Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. There are two new clips from this film on Yahoo! Movies right now, and I think they had the opposite effect from what’s intended. When I saw the first two trailers for this, I was excited by how close they came to the look of classic Dr. Seuss illustrations, and I was hoping the film would play as a righteous homage to his work in general. Long-time-spy-with-a-brand-new-name “Ouendaaaaaaaaaaan!” pops in today with a full report on his reaction to Blue Sky’s latest animated offering, and it sounds like he felt the way I did after seeing those clips, which seemed more manic than funny, more loud than entertaining. Let’s see...
Sigh. It's not much fun laying into one of these films. When you hear the Blue Sky guys talk, they're full of such enthusiasm. When you see the images they've generated for the screen, you're amazed at what they've pulled off. When you have a book and an author as well loved as Seuss, you're really pulling for them to get it right. But when you see the finished product, it's a really underwhelming, even slightly draining experience. I remember the rush of seeing Toy Story for the first time, and everything came together so beautifully that it took a few more viewings to really take in. A leap forward visually, but more than that, a wonderful combination of imagination, characterisation and genuine wit, which managed to entrance kids and adults alike. In the mid-90s, something of a golden age for cinema if you ask me, here was a kids' film that left you dizzy on the power of cinema to enthrall and entertain. And while Pixar produced a series of films (which were nearly as good, and occasionally, arguably better) the other 3D guys arrived, and the likes of Shrek were born. For me, the goodwill generated by Pixar's work carried over onto these other films, createing a feeling that a 3D animated movie would be worth seeing. That then began to wane as Dreamworks in particular shovelled out a series of also-rans, dominated by sequels, stunt-casting, uninspired plots and tiresome pop culture references. (Shrek 3 was, for me, one of the better ones as they seemed to not bother with jokes, so we were spared seeing yet another humorous historical take on a Burger King logo...) To be fair to Blue Sky Studios, I thought Ice Age was a pretty decent start, mainly thanks to the visual humour they brought with Scrat's antics. Robots was pretty middle-of-the-road in my eyes but with Horton Hears A Who, they seem to have completed their transition from Pixar-wannabe to Dreamworks-style also-ran. It starts nicely, with some genuinely impressive visuals: photo-realistic water drops on a leaf start a chain reaction that dislodges the Whoville speck and sets the story in motion. And then the rot of overwhelming seen-it-all-before averageness starts to set in. Here comes Jim Carrey (as Horton) doing his wacky thing once more, with a script that's not really worthy of the enthusiasm he puts into it. Now we'll introduce a few cute, happy-meal-destined sidekicks, most of whom are voiced by someone you'll have heard of, with Seth Rogen being given the most screen-time. He made me laugh a few times, I'm gracious enough to admit. Down in Whoville, things are a little more entertaining because there's a little more to look at. On the downside, the humour level seems pretty similar. "Thing X is not going to happen!" [Thing X happens]. And then come my beloved pop culture reviews. There's an eye-rollingly tired 2D bit where (stepping on Kung Fu Panda's upcoming toes) Horton imagines himself as a heroic warrior, complete with that joke where people move their mouth a lot and speak like they're dubbing a 70s kung-fu movie. Bombarded with fruit by monkeys, Horton claims to "love the smell of bananas in the morning". They're jokes that'll go over the heads of a young audience and bore the shit out of the parents. It was the moment when the Mayor's assistant (complete with sassy black woman voice over, but a white face) logs onto whospace.com and brags about how many friends she has when I genuinely lost all hope, though. NNNNGGAAAAAAARGGHGHGHHGH!!!! You're adapting a book that's loved, by a writer loved even more. A nice story with lovely visuals. Just adapt the fucking thing, keep the voiceover, and drop the references to the internet, which didn't even exist when Seuss died. Or if you have to drag the thing kicking and screaming into the modern era, do it with some ingenuity, wit and originality, and leave the riffs on slow-motion action sequences and brief moments of breakdancing for Meet The Spartans 2. It's simply not good enough to make a reference to something without a genuinely good joke to back it up. I understand why these moments are there - this is a thin story that needed expanding to fill an animated feature. The end result, however, is a film that's occasionally delightful, when all you're given is some impressive visuals and excerpts from the original Seuss rhyme, then increasingly tiresome as everything in between pads out, or flat out pisses on, the good stuff. Is there anything to like? The finale works pretty well, and would have been a lot more effective on the end of a better film. The angry mob who try to seize Horton's speck are slightly sinister and the way Whoville reacts is worth seeing on a big screen. But that's certainly not a recommendation for this genuinely lackluster effort.
