“I love, and have always loved all Dr Seuss.” So confides comedian Jim Carrey who played the titular character in the live-action film adaptation of Dr Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) and now supplies the voice of Horton, the elephant hero of two of the American writer/cartoonist’s wildly popular stories: Horton Hatches the Egg (1941); and Horton Hears a Who! (1954) – a tale written for kiddies that nonetheless can be read as a retort to Joseph McCarthy’s 1950’s witch hunts and also has figured – chiefly via invocations of the heroic Horton’s recurrent “A person is a person, no matter how small!” – in the abortion debate that remains ongoing in the USA.
Politically minded folks will undoubtedly find much food for thought in the first fully computer-animated adaptation of Dr Seuss’ writings, not just the tale of Horton Hears a Who! At the same time, however, I sense that far more viewers will be more captivated by the imaginative visuals and often amusing antics of the main characters of this big budget Hollywood movie which begins, “On the 15th of May, in the jungle of Nool, in the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool,” with its playful pachyderm protagonist chancing to hear a noise from a small speck of dust floating through the air.
As unlikely as it may sound, that flimsy fleck turns out be home to a lively community of microscopic beings known as the Whos of Who-ville. So unlikely is it, in fact, that the elephant encounters major problems getting others of Nool’s residents, especially its adult members led by the officious Sour Kangaroo (Carol Burnett), to believe that it is indeed the case. Alternatively put: Horton hears a Who but not many others in his world do, at least not initially.
Already considered somewhat eccentric, the sweet-natured and kind-hearted Horton has to deal with scepticism, increasing exasperation and surprising wrath from his community over the course of his seemingly quixotic bid to protect the speck and its residents from danger and outright obliteration. In particular, the control-freakish Sour Kangaroo feels personally affronted that Horton is far more intent on listening to tiny beings neither she nor he can see than accepting her declaration of “If you can’t see it, wear it or feel it, it doesn’t exist”; and thus is moved to engage a hit man – or, in this case, a bird in the form of the vulture Vlad Vladikoff (Will Arnett) – to get rid of Horton’s speck.
Meanwhile, down in Who-ville, the community’s well-intentioned mayor (Steve Carrell) has to come to terms with the idea that his whole world is a single small speck of dust in the world of the “giant elephant in the sky” and, worse, that Who-ville’s existence is reliant on that elephant who has attached the speck to a clover which he is seeking to transport to a safe location! Stung by being called a boob by a community elder, the mayor doesn’t want to invite further ridicule, although he has noticed long before the other Whos that something is amiss with their world.
Adapted from a children’s book and coming with a Category I rating, Horton Hears a Who! is clearly a movie whose target audience includes little ’uns. However, that doesn’t mean older individuals will not derive much enjoyment from this work. For even if the film’s story of cosmic convergence and cross-world contact is basic enough to be understood by pretty much anyone, the actual story-telling and boundary-stretching animation is highly sophisticated, and all the more impressive for being so.
Yvonne Teh |
