Arguably The Best Of The Dr. Seuss Movies: Horton Hears A Who!

The Good: Wonderful themes, Good voice acting, Character stuggle
The Bad: Somewhat predictable, Moments of forced humor
The Basics: Horton Hears A Who! might well be the most underrated of the Dr. Seuss film adaptations as a story of an elephant struggling to save a microscopic world, despite social pressure against him.


There are very few Dr. Seuss books that I actually remember. It has been such a long time since I was a child and was read the stories, so whenever I have seen one of the films based upon the works of Dr. Seuss, I have been able to do a very pure review of the movie for what it is, without the comparative analysis to how the movies stack up against the books. In the case of Horton Hears A Who!, I have no memories of the book and I was very surprised when my wife excitedly bought the movie on Blu-Ray when it was dirt cheap on Black Friday.

For me, the surprise was how mature Horton Hears A Who! was when the movie commits to its more adult themes. Horton Hears A Who! is essentially a piece that argues a liberal perspective and contrasts reality and faith. The result is a movie that is occasionally geared to children that educates them on both the value of life, the importance of imagination, and the power of one person to stand up to the hive mind for a principle that is right (as opposed to going along with the crowd).

Horton is an elephant living in the jungle who is imaginative, clever, and very active in the jungle community. While Horton mentors the children in the jungle, the community is actually controlled by the fearsome and socially repressive Kangaroo. While taking a bath one day, a speck finds its way to Horton and he hears the voice of the Mayor Of Whoville coming from it. Putting the speck on a flower, Horton listens to the Mayor – who has more than ninety daughters and a single, asocial son (named JoJo). Looking around the jungle, Horton realizes that there is nowhere truly safe for the tiny world of Whoville, so he commits to saving the people living on the speck.

In Whoville, the Mayor works to convince the town council that the Whocentennial should be postponed until the town is safe, though no one believes they are all living on a speck and he is being spoken to by a giant elephant. While Horton makes a journey to a mountain, where he believes the speck will be safe, he tells the children about the Speck and Whoville and the children begin to emulate Horton, carrying around flowers which they claim have speck worlds of their own. Kangaroo is outraged by the influence Horton has and she hires the vulture, Vlad, to destroy Horton’s flower and the speck. As Horton tries to save Whoville, the Mayor works to protect his people despite being utterly powerless.

Horton Hears A Who! features two protagonists who are combated largely by social pressure. Even Horton’s allies push for Horton to give up the flower and the speck – to which Horton declares he made a promise and he has to protect the people of Whoville because “people are people, no matter how small.” The Mayor is terrified about being ostracized when Horton advises him to get the people underground and he has to tell everyone that they are living on a speck and he has been talking with a giant elephant.

Horton Hears A Who! is rich in allegory and metaphor and the messages of the film are smart and worthwhile. The writing team uses the source material to create one of the most compelling films to advocate for imagination and social rebellion to come along in years. Both Horton and the Mayor are characters with deep convictions. Horton is loyal and determined in addition to being imaginative. The Mayor might spend most of the movie hampered by fear of social ramifications to his standing up to reveal the truth of their existence, but when he makes an impassioned case based on reason and science, he does so with great courage (albeit rather problematic plot twists at the same time).

The adversaries in Horton Hears A Who! are largely monolithic. The leader of the town council of Whoville and Kangaroo are solely interested in power and control. Kangaroo uses children as an excuse to be repressive and mean to Horton and in that way the film adequately exposes the way fear is used to manipulate people (perfect for a Bush Era movie!).

The voice acting in Horton Hears A Who! is homogenously wonderful. Carol Burnett is appropriately snooty as Kangaroo and Jim Carrey gives an impressive performance filled with (alternately) energy and determination. Steve Carell is funny as the Mayor, though he is not given much in the way to do where his character could ever have credibly been a mayor had he not essentially inherited the role.

The animation in Horton Hears A Who! looks incredible even on the small screen. Because the flower is so essential to the plot, the fact that on a decent HDTV, one may see every hair of pollen on the flowers is absolutely incredible. Horton Hears A Who! has a fantastic sense of physics which contrasts the heavy and realistic themes in the movie. Even better, the sense of movement is very manic in the Jungle and comparatively much more still in most of the Whoville sequences, which helps to clearly differentiate the two worlds in the movie.

Ultimately, Horton Hears A Who! is fun, funny, and smart enough to entertain children and adults alike!

For other works works with Jim Carrey, please check out my reviews of:
Kick-Ass 2
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
Nantucket Film Festival’s Comedy Roundtable
A Christmas Carol
I Love You Phillip Morris
Yes Man
Fun With Dick And Jane
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
How The Grinch Stole Christmas
The Truman Show
Batman Forever

7.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Guns, Violence And Megan Fox's Jiggling Breasts All Sell Jonah Hex As Typical Summer Fare!

The Good: Interesting characters, Generally decent revenge story
The Bad: Nothing terribly new or exciting, Dialogue is mediocre-at-best, SHORT!
The Basics: A hugely disappointing Western-flavored revenge story takes a turn for the mediocre by pulling its punches and having terrible dialogue in Jonah Hex.


For the last few years, we've known it's summer by the arrival on the big screen of Megan Fox and her breasts. For last summer, her cleavage was highlighted thanks to the period-piece Jonah Hex, which is a fairly simple revenge movie that is far more average than it is actually terrible. Those who might have been waiting to see Megan Fox running around in a corset instead of a tanktop, now is your prime opportunity! But don't wait too long; because of near-universal pannings and poor opening weekend grosses, Jonah Hex went out of theaters quickly and the DVD/Blu-Rays are already headed to the discount bins!

That said, Jonah Hex is a mildly creative film based upon the DC graphic novel by the same name. The "mildly creative" comes from the generally-decent effects and use of weaponry that is not period-accurate. It is worth noting right up front that I've not read any of the Jonah Hex graphic novels or comic books, so I went to my viewing of the film very much open-minded. However, after seeing previews and glancing at reviews, I left my expectations low going into it.

Jonah Hex is not absolutely terrible; while it is not good, it ultimately felt a lot more average than actually atrocious. Perhaps my resistance to lousy movies has been seriously lowered in recent days, but I have seen worse films this year than Jonah Hex.

In the mid-1800s, in the U.S. frontier, there is a man with deep facial scars named Jonah Hex. Having once been branded and left for dead by Quentin Turnbull, Jonah Hex is now a bounty hunter who has little regard for people and the ability to speak with the dead. His line of work has made him an enemy of the U.S. government enough times to make him hunted by government agents himself. When Lieutenant Grass encounters Jonah Hex, Jonah is mildly surprised to be offered a clean slate: all prior charges against Jonah Hex dropped . . . if he can stop Quentin Turnbull and his current evil scheme.

Quentin Turnbull wants to take over the world and he is not above trying to raise demons from Hell to try to do it. As he works to put a world-destroying device into play, Jonah Hex, his friend Lilah, and his arsenal built by Smith are set on a collision course to stop him.

With the catchphrase "Revenge Gets Ugly," Jonah Hex seemed like it could be a Western or science fiction reincarnation of Payback, but it falls drastically short of that level of enduring interest, much less greatness. Jonah Hex is plagued by very typical moviemaking problems - especially for films rated PG-13 - but because it falls in with the current crowd of bad movies, it is hard to complain ad nauseam about that. The main problem with Jonah Hex is its lack of scope or ambition. In keeping the movie PG-13, "Jonah Hex" is forced to pull punches and director Jimmy Hayward is forced to scale back most of the things that would actually make the characters more interesting. The movie is PG-13 graphic, but its main protagonist and antagonist walk around like they are mean enough to be in an "R" film. So, when they encounter one another, the result is decidedly less spectacular than if they had actually told a great story.

That lack of ambition comes through on the character and plot levels as well, though the acting is generally decent. The acting in Jonah Hex keeps the reality of the film intact quite well and Jonah Hex, Lilah and Quentin Turnbull all seem place and time specific with a realism that sets one up to be engaged by the movie. As well, the costumes are good (and not just for Megan Fox's cleavage) and because the movie is so ridiculously short, it moves along at quite a quick pace with little distraction from the stated goals of the main characters.

Unfortunately, that is where my ability to equivocate on behalf of the film ends. Virtually every line in the movie is a lame attempt at a melodramatic catchphrase. Moreover, the characters are much more archetypes than they are actual characters after their initial creation. Lilah is a world-hardened prostitute, Jonah Hex is scarred, mean, but has a layer that still appears to be human and Quentin Turnbull is yet another over-the-top villain who wants to rule the world. In very predictable fashion, Turnbull's world-domination plans become sublimated to his overwhelming desire to see Jonah Hex dead, which makes one wonder what school all these stupid supervillains go to where they don't seem to learn that if you dominate the entire world with your hell army, you'll have plenty of resources to kill your old foes! Seriously, learn to delegate villains! As one might expect, Jonah Hex does not adequately flesh out Quentin Turnbull to give him a viable reason for wanting to rule the world.

As for the plot, this is a very typical revenge and hero-in-the-process-of-becoming story with little spark or originality. Again, this makes it more average than truly terrible and while it is disappointing, the film has moments where it looks good.

Josh Brolin and John Malkovich do quite well at physically portraying anti-heroes and villains in Jonah Hex and Quentin Turnbull. Sure, Malkovich is pretty much an obvious choice to cast for any villainous role (he's played a ton of great villains), so Quentin Turnbull is pretty much par for the course Malkovich is known for. Brolin, however, continues to illustrate his range and Jonah Hex is very much unlike any of his previous, timid characters and that makes him a treat to watch even when the writing is as bad as it is in Jonah Hex. And, to be fair to her, Megan Fox is not bad as Lilah; the character is just very much an archetype and cliché as opposed to an actual character.

Ultimately, Jonah Hex disappoints as pretty much every other reviewer has acknowledged and the hopes for a franchise look dim for the studio. But there are vastly worse comic book adaptation films (there are three on the tip of my tongue) and while Jonah Hex might be bad in many parts, it never becomes a campy embarrassment to the whole genre.

For other films based upon DC comic book characters, please check out my reviews of:
The Dark Knight
Wonder Woman
Batman Returns
Watchmen

4.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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