Review: Dr. Seuss' The Lorax

As I sat in my room, one rainy March day, I decided to see what movie critics had to say.  A brand new movie was about to come out, Dr. Seuss' The Lorax was making people shout.  "It's atrocious! Abysmal! Dr. Seuss would be ashamed!" "But it's well-meaning and cute, it's really not that lame!"  I was sitting confused as I ever could be.  Was this a film that I should go see? Myself unsure and the reviews quite mixed, I avoided the film, until it popped up on Netflix.  I was still unsure, as I went to click Play. Would I find enjoyment in the film, or dismay?

Unfortunately, despite good intentions and some great ideas to make the original story work as a feature length film, The Lorax is another miss in the series of film adaptations of Dr. Seuss' works.  All the pieces were in place for the movie to join Horton Hears a Who as one of the better Seuss adaptations, but somewhere along the way the filmmakers lost sight of not only Dr. Seuss' vision, but of their own vision as well.

Dr. Seuss' story of a boy who goes to the Once-ler(voiced by Ed Helms) to hear the story of the Lorax(voiced by Danny Devito) and the destruction of the Truffula Trees remains largely unchanged. Except for the addition of an entire second plot involving the boy, named Ted(voiced by Zac Efron), and the citizens of the entirely-made-of-plastic Thneedville.  Ted wants to find a real, organic tree to get the attention of his neighbor Audrey(voiced by Taylor Swift). Led to the Once-ler by his grandmother(voiced by Betty White), Ted discovers that Thneedville lies in the center of a wasteland of smog and dead tree stumps.  Ted's actions attract the attention of Aloysius O'Hare, a powerful bottled air magnate who keeps the citizens Thneedville unaware of their surroundings.  As Ted listens to the Once-ler's story, he discovers that restoring the Truffula Trees may be more important than he could ever imagine.

As you can see, there's a lot going on in The Lorax, and that's it's biggest problem.  In stretching the material to feature length, the filmmakers ended up adding too much additional material.  There are too many sub-plots and side characters, and the movie actually devotes more time to these than the main story.  On top of that, a lot of the extra characters are just unnecessary.  Too much time is spent with the families of Ted and the Once-ler.  They're just included for more jokes that didn't do much for me.  The new villain O'Hare is about as boring a villain as you can get, he just wants money and power, and the movie would have greatly benefited from his exclusion.  Also, the pacing can be pretty off at times.  The movie alternates from Ted's story to the Once-ler's throughout most of the movie, and it's a good balance at first.  However, the final part of the Lorax's story is reduced to a two minute song(yeah, The Lorax is also a musical), and the last 20 minutes of the movie focuses on the boring sub-plot with the boring villain.

Also lacking is the voice acting.  Not that it's bad, it's just that I can tell that these are celebrities talking into a microphone.  Also, some of the actors have such distinct voices it's hard not to be distracted.  Every time Ed Helms speaks or sings, I just hear Andy from The Office or Stu from The Hangover.  However, his voice for the much older Once-ler is very good.  By far the weakest link in the chain of celebrity voice actors is Taylor Swift.  She's trying her best, but half the time her voice acting doesn't match with the animation in the expressions on her character and it's really distracting.  The rest of the cast does a fine enough job, but you can tell they were cast for marketing reasons.

And that's how a lot of The Lorax feels; like the filmmakers got more concerned with making the movie more marketable, and that really betrays the message of the original story.  The message is still there, in fact it felt like the movie was trying to force it down my throat half the time, but it gets lost in the movie's huge Hollywood production values.

If there's anything good that came out of The Lorax, it would be the animation and design of the movie.  Everything looks like it was plucked right from the brain of Dr. Seuss.  The comedic timing is also very good, with character's expressions getting more laughs than the jokes that come out of their mouths.  The scenes involving the Once-ler's story are pretty good, as they're the parts that are the most faithful to the book, and I'm fine with giving Ted his own story, but there was just too much time devoted to it.  As the credits roll, artwork from the book is shown, which I'm sure was meant to pay tribute to the original, but to those who cherish the book and original TV special, it feels more like a slap to the face.  Everything looks like Seuss' original vision, but pretty visuals can't make up for the bad choices on the part of the filmmakers.  Just like the Once-ler got caught up in "biggering and biggering" his Thneed industry, the makers of The Lorax got caught up in biggering and biggering the movie's profits.

Score:
2.5/5 Stars

The Lorax means well and has some good moments as well some great animation, but everything the original stood for gets lost in the larger-than-life production values.