Horton Hears A Who
20th Century Fox, 88mins, G




Directed by Jimmy Hayward
and Steve Martino

In the early 1940s, animation giant Bob Clampett decided to do something different. He made an adaptation of a genuine book. It was about an elephant named Horton, who had hatched an egg as a favor to the mother, who was off for a while. The book was written by a sertain Theodore Seuss Giesel, who using his middle name as a nom-de-plume, was making a name for himself as an editorial cartoonist and writer of childrens books.

IT was so popular that it Geisel wrote a sequel [albeit fourteen years later], which was made into a TV special by Chuck Jones in 1970, which brings us to a great philosophical question. How is it possible to adapt Dr. Seuss to the big screen. After all, his works were relatively short, and while Clampett's adaptation works brilliantly, it was only ten minutes long, and Jones' “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” was heavily padded to twice that long (not including commercials, which make it a half hour).

Then, of course there were those two atrocious live-action adaptations that came out recently. They didn't work because they were too long, and didn't have the feel of the creator's artistic style. In fact, Geisel's daughters vowed never to have a live-action adaptation of his work again. Which was a good idea.

Now the people who did “Ice Age” managed to get the rights to “Horton Hears a Who”, which is probably the good doctor's deepest book, and managed to actually get it right.

On the fifteenth of May, in the Jungle of Nool, In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool, we meet Horton the elephant(Jim Carrey) splashing around and enjoying himself. He's the local educator, sort of like the devil ray in “Finding Nemo” only with a better sense of humor. Only this time, he's the center of attention, when he hears a voice from another planet, for the Mayor(Steve Carell) of Whoville, who lives on a speck with the rest of his race, has somehow managed to accidentally make contact.

Now the film differs from the book in a number of ways, for example, in the microscopic sphere, the Mayor is a bit of a nebbish who spends a lot of time having sex, [he has 96 daughters and one son] and doesn't have the respect of the city council or his only son. He's scared no one will believe him when he says that there's a bigger world out there, which is a similar problem to Horton's, for the dictatorial Mrs. Kangaroo(Carol Burnett) has warned him not to cause trouble by talking about other worlds that are invisible to the naked eye.

Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio had a very special problem, how to keep it over the top in the Dr. Seuss fashion while actually being restrained enough to keep everything from falling apart [not to mention rated “G”] This they and directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino do. It's Dr. Seuss all the way, and the whole thing is one of a piece. This is a fun film, and is well worth a look.

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