🦋 Horton
Look, Horton Hears a Who is not Dr. Seuss' best work. It has some nice moments, but if you spend any time thinking about it you quickly realize that 1, Horton is doing the Whos a massive disservice by interfering with their destiny and 2, the whole thing is pretty sappy. But whatever, the pictures are great, the poetry is great, it's a fun book. A really good animated short could probably be made out of it. (My dream of a live-action production with no dialog, probably not something that would ever come to pass.) Expanding it into a feature film was a really bad idea, because it meant that the film-makers had to dwell at great length on the incoherencies of the plot and insert lots new poorly-fitting stuff as well. (The whole plot line about politics in Whoville was totally lame, even though it produced as a happy accident, one interesting moment where the idea that the Whos had to prove their existence to the outside world was inverted; also the plotline about the Mayor's relationship with his son -- lame and tacked-on, no relationship to the rest of the movie.) So, Sylvia is having Kaydi over to spend the night -- as a prelude to they festivities we went over to the South Orange cinema. The girls loved the film and your kids probably will too, but try and get somebody else to take them. Or find a way of bringing some powerful intoxicants along, that would probably make the movie worth while. (OTOH, if you've got powerful intoxicants handy, there are much more interesting ways you could make use of them.) Some of the visuals, particularly the outdoor shots of Whoville, are lovely; though sad to say Horton and the kangaroo, the visual centerpieces of the film, are pretty uninteresting. The Rube Goldberg musical machine the mayor's son builds at the end is totally splendid.
posted evening of Saturday, March 15th, 2008
➳ More posts about The Movies
➳ More posts about Sylvia
|
