"Horton Hears a Who" Review

"Horton Hears a Who”
2008
** out of ****
Directors: Jimmy Hayward, Steve Martino
Cast (voices): Jim Carrey, Steve Carell, Seth Rogen

Horton Hears a Who, yet another Dr. Seuss classic. But what’s more, another book that was ruined by the film industry. Congratulations, 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky!

Oh boy, was I disappointed with this one. Although this wasn’t as bad as How the Grinch Stole Christmas was back in 2000, I was extremely dissatisfied with it overall. I left the theater shaking my head and thinking I can’t believe I spent 8 bucks on this crap. However, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t terrible. But the fact of the matter is: The hour and a half I spent in the theater this afternoon watching an elephant was not worth the 8 bucks I spent.

Horton is an elephant. One day, while walking along the forest, he hears the faintest sound coming from a speck of dust, and swears that it is calling for help. The speck begins blowing away, and so, he begins to chase it . When he finally catches it on a “clover” (The characters in the movie call it a “clover”, but in actuality, its a flower of some sort.) he listens closely, and does in fact hear tiny voices.

Meanwhile, the little people Horton heard are Whos, and the town on that little speck is Whoville. In the Whos’ minds they are not tiny. They have no idea that their whole civilization lay on a tiny speck. Whoville has been experiencing some weird things lately: Violent bumps, rapid changes from dark to light, abrupt weather patterns. However, nobody thought much of it.

One day the mayor of Whoville hears rumbling in a drainpipe just outside his office. He puts a horn into there, and he can hear the voice clearly: The booming, overpower voice of Horton the Elephant. Horton begins to explain to the mayor that Whoville is but a tiny speck. The mayor begins to explain to Horton that their world is in danger, and that he needs to get them into stable conditions. So, Horton makes it his obligation to get that speck up to the top of the mountain. However, the big bad kangaroo, who is like the head of the forest, feels that Horton is corrupting the minds of the children by putting false ideas into their heads, and tries to stop him with all she has. However, Horton insists through it all, A person’s a person, no matter how small.

The Dr. Seuss book was always a favorite of mine as a child, and so, I was really hoping that this would turn out great. However, my final verdict is that it turned out ok. The animation was great, the voices were great (the actors were perfect), there were some funny lines that made me laugh. However, during some scenes I felt myself subconsciously dozing off. The rhyming could have been placed much better. And when it was used, it annoyed me.

However, the success of this film is through the roof! It made $45 mil. in its opening weekend. The guys over at 20th Century Fox are geniuses. The trailers they put out for this were funny, and they placed the release of this film right before Easter. Is that not genius? All of the kids will be home from school, and all of them are going to want to see Horton. Can you say, Cha-Ching! Overall, it only gets a ** from me though. I wasn’t pleased. They could have done so much more with this.

--- SPECIAL 2nd OPINION ---

I wanted to include this here to give readers a little bit of insight of what kids think of this movie.

My little cousin saw Horton last weekend. His name is Ben, he is 6 years old, and I asked him what he thought of it.

His rating: **** out of ****

His review: It was funny.

Well, there you have it, folks, a future reviewer here on FilmArcade!