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Just saw "Horton Hears a Who." It's a mashup of Dr. Seuss's original story and typical Hollywood inanity by grown-ups with no idea of how sophisticated a child's sense of humor can be. Lots of silly sight gags, lots of idiotic jokes and just a touch of gross-out humor--not too bad, though. The worst parts are when the writers have to craft a verse or two to tie the Seuss story to what the writers and director have done to stretch the short book into a long movie. It's as grating as substituting a cigar box with rubber bands for a violin in an orchestral work.
Overall, not a bad movie for kids--my nine year old loved it--but not really the kind of film a grownup or even teenager will want to watch by themselves. Not Pixar or Ghibli, in other words.
Two things really impressed me, though. First, the brilliant poetic skills of Dr. Seuss really shines. You can feel the difference when the film switches from his work to the adaptation. In some ways, his brilliance is made more obvious by the failed attempts to mimic him, since you couldn't put finger on exactly why they fail, but you can clearly tell they do.
Second, the absolute brilliance of Dr. Seuss's work goes beyond the poetry. I don't know his politics, or if he even had strong political views, but there is a universality to his work that transcends liberal/conservative debate. Horton defends his tiny world from people who refuse to believe it exists, and defends it from those who don't really care whether it exists, who only want to destroy it because it is in their way. I at first got my timetable wrong, and wondered if were commenting on our imperialism during Viet Nam, by pointing out the arrogance of a large society wanting to destroy a small society because the small society challenged its sense of normality. But Geisel wrote the story in 1954, during the McCarthy/Army hearings, so Viet Nam wasn't an issue. There were overtones of condemnation of Hitler, of the Soviets, and of our actions in Korea. I don't know if Theodor Geisel was for or against our actions in Korea, but the message of the story was so much grander--it was against all cultures, all societies that ignored others, that stepped on others simply because they were smaller and odd.
A person's a person, no matter how small. The first time Horton says this in the film, even though the film had been barely watchable up to that point for me, I choked up. It had nothing to do with the movie, it was all in Dr. Seuss's line, all in the context of his work. Of course, Dr. Seuss wrote for children. No doubt he was reminding kids that they were significant, and reminding parents to treat them that way. But his words were more universal, and there's no question he understood that.
For those who don't remember the story, Whoville has to convince Horton's world that they exist, and so they have to be loud enough for the other world to hear them. They can't make enough noise until, finally, one last voice, that of the smallest, most insignificant child in Whoville finally adds his tiny voice to the fray. His voice makes the difference, and the world is saved.
Brilliant stuff. How inspiring to a small child. How poignant a condemnation of Joseph McCarthy. How inspirational to those of us who forget we can make a difference. How perfect as a justification for Democratic Underground, for a thousand sites on the web. One voice, the final, weakest voice, may be the one to save us all. Makes me less eager to silence all the noisemakers in GDP, if nothing else.
Even the silly Hollywoood slapstick piece couldn't weaken his message.
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