The Lorax (2012) Reviews

• The Lorax himself is fun, but the movie itself is a let down.

  drewmeister112012-03-02

  I went to see this movie with two girl friends of mine. Throughout the movie, one of them kept groaning and sighing at the same parts I did. The other later accused us of never having been kids. I think they might both be right. If you were ever a child, you are probably familiar with Doctor Seuss's 'The Lorax', a tale of a world where man's greed and selfishness has eradicated all the trees in favor of their escapist man-made town. It's a charming yet somewhat depressing book as the main character realizes what he's destroyed, yet leaves a glimmer of hope at the end as he passes off the last tree seed to a young boy to plant. As a kid, I loved the bittersweet end, as it got the message across and made me want to care about preserving nature. The movie, on the other hand, left me thoroughly unimpressed. Let me get the good parts out of the way first. Naturally, the art style is fantastic and whimsical, as all Seuss work is. Danny Devito does a great job as the Lorax, and I feel it's pretty safe to say that the parts of the story actually focusing on the Lorax himself were indeed enjoyable. That is, with the exception of a badly placed musical number, which makes any sorrow at the trees being destroyed seem diluted. You should be upset that the Lorax leaves us, but I was more upset that I WASN'T upset. Unfortunately, the part of the story focusing on the boy trying to find a tree was tiresome. It's a case where the book was more dramatic than the story - nature had been ravaged, and nobody cared about it except for one boy. In the movie, it's basically all because of some horribly stereotyped evil characters - Once-ler himself is painted as naive but still a good person, but the creators apparently didn't want him to seem corrupt in chopping down all the trees so they have his redneck family do it for him. And the business tycoon Mr. O-Hare is just ridiculously evil. I'm not going to say that big businessmen shouldn't be villains or anything like that , but the point of the original book was that all of mankind had stopped caring, whereas the movie says it's the fault of Once-ler and O'hare entirely, the latter of who deliberately is keeping people clueless about trees. I just feel the ending would have been far more dramatically appropriate if, instead of having a cliché'd (and underwhelming) chase scene where he shows everybody O'hare is evil, if he instead needed to actually CONVINCE people that trees were worth caring about (he convinces them by knocking down a wall at the end. Apparently in the last 15 or so years nobody had even once looked outside.) Additionally, when he finally plants the seed, all the other trees start growing again. Not sure how, but it makes me wonder - if that's all it took, why didn't Once-ler try to plant the seed 15 years ago? Also, they throw in a 'hip grandmother' pretty much entirely because they know grandparents will be taking their kid. At one point the romantic interest actually says 'Wow, how cool is your grandmother'. This bothered me for some reason. Perhaps because I have no soul. Also, it's apparently a musical, something that the ads failed to mention. I'm not against musicals, but the combined fact that 1.) i wasn't prepared for that (Despicable Me, their previous movie, had none) and 2.) the music was... bland. I can't remember any of it and i just got out 20 minutes ago. Also, as I said earlier, one musical number completely ruins the tragic mood it tried to set with the trees getting chopped down. I know that it can be hard translating a Seuss book, usually with only 20 or 30 pages, into a feature film is a tough task. But honestly, if you don't even get the theme right then you have failed in your task. Lorax is enjoyable in a lot of parts, but the parts that aren't AREN'T. Final verdict: 5/10. Your kids might like it, but the uninspired music, botched ending, and boring finale are real game breakers.

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• What a waste.

  The_Film_Cricket2012-09-09

  One of the problems with the recent attempts to adapt Dr. Seuss' books into movies is Hollywood's tendency to intrude upon his work with cute, snappy dialogue and slapstick comedy, and expand on appropriately thin material with gobs of hip-cool dialogue and needless subplots. Anyone familiar with Dr. Seuss' books knows that this is completely the wrong approach. A good example is "The Lorax", the 1971 book which was about the depletion of the environment through industrial carelessness. The book ends with a somber, but hopeful, message that the environment could be saved by one caring individual. The movie ends with a car chase. You can see the problem here. The original story involved a little boy who arrived, under "smog-smuggered sky", to see a hermit called The Once-ler, who lived in sad looking structure atop his store. For a small fee, the guilt-ridden Once-ler laid out the story of how the land got so filthy. Years before, he had arrived in this land when it was brimming with bountiful color and life and how he decimated that life by cutting down all the Truffala Trees in order to make a product called The Thneed. Despite dire warnings from the forest guardian called The Lorax, the Once-ler continued his profligate ways until he turned the once beautiful landscape into a desolate wasteland. The book never gave the boy a name, an origin, or a reason for coming to see The Once-ler (he was meant to represent the reader). Not so in the movie. The boy is called Ted Wiggins and he lives in a completely artificial town of Thneedville, which is completely devoid of anything natural and surrounded by a large steel wall. His reason for seeking out The Once-ler is that he wants to impress a girl by bringing her a Truffala Tree, which are extinct. Exiting the town on his motorbike, he goes to find The Once-ler, who spells out his story. Much of the movie flashes back in time to tell how The Once-ler (who was never seen in the book, but is often seen here) came to destroy this beautiful forest. The Lorax, who "speaks for the trees" wants the Once-ler to stop his wasteful means and move on, but The Once-ler sees profit in logging and won't stop. That's good enough, but why did we need a subplot in which Ted tries to stop a greedy industrialist called Mr. O'Hare (who has made millions selling bottles of fresh air) from planting trees? Worse, why did we need a happy ending? Why did the book's hopeful ending get drawn out into a roller-coaster car chase around Thneedville followed by a lame musical number? Even more puzzling is why the screenwriters decided to throw away Dr. Seuss' dialogue. The magic of Seuss' stories lay in his dances of words and a distinctive rhyming structure. The movie has none of this. The characters speak in the kinds of smart-alecky phrases that every animated feature these days seems to incorporate. That means quips, insults, clever asides and buzz words. The title is painfully misleading. The basic problem is that the filmmakers didn't have the courage to follow the original work. Their movie represents a fear that telling such a deep and sorrowful story will offend viewers who might ask for their money back. Their movie is blown up, wrapped up and packaged as silly musical comedy with an environmental message buried in the corner. This isn't the worst movie of the year, but it is certainly the most weak-kneed. Will kids enjoy it? As a diversion for a Saturday afternoon, probably, but it would do an injustice to introduce this story to them through this movie. The only positive is that it will probably exit their brains almost as soon as it is over. Revisit the book and you'll that there is a reason that Dr. Suess' story has remained in our minds for 40 years. If Dr. Seuss had written his book as it plays out in this movie, it would have long been lost into the dustbins of history, which where this wrong-headed movie is very likely headed.

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• Sometimes change is a good thing...

  theantimonyelement2012-04-04

  ...in this case, changes from the book/original TV short. A lot of people have been lamenting the "frame story" this movie adds in, as well as the idea of making the Once-ler a human character. As far as the frame goes, it's done pretty well. It's a bit flat but perfectly enjoyable for younger kids. Making the Once-ler human, though? BRILLIANT. Hear me out. The original Once-ler was a faceless force of destruction, a shadowy embodiment of greed. This Once-ler is just a stupid kid with a dream, a guy who wants to change the world. He's not evil, but he lets his success get to his head, and that brings about his own downfall and the destruction of the forest. That's FANTASTIC, and here's why: that's how the world really is! Companies don't sit around all day cackling about how much smog they're pumping into the atmosphere; it's a process, and something that happened gradually. Obliviousness is just as dangerous as maliciousness, and that's a really powerful lesson. This can happen to YOU if you're not careful; anybody can hurt the planet if they don't pay attention. That's a rare lesson, and one I'm really pleased to see in this movie. So, is it silly and stupid sometimes? Yes, of course. But it's colorful and exuberant, and in a lot of ways I think it really captured the "Seuss-ness" that similar remakes have missed. There's nothing offensive about it (besides the miserable marketing) and my little brother enjoyed it as a fun movie. I enjoyed it for giving us a deeper--and in my opinion, very powerful--character type: the accidental villain, the everydude who makes a horrible mistake that the environment suffers for. So take that as you will...but overall, I found myself liking this a lot more than I expected. Definitely worth a watch.

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• Two Stories, One Vastly Superior

  ebbradsh2014-04-09

  All reviewers of this movie seem to either love it or hate it, and it's easy to see why. As has been pointed out to death, the "modernized" Hollywood story added in of a celebrity-voiced kid trying to win a girl and overcome a two- dimensional villain in the process is thoroughly uninteresting, and will make older moviegoers angry at the lack of effort made in expanding the story. The Once-ler's tale, on the other hand, is the story carried over from the book, one of unchecked ambition and carelessness. The Once-ler is morally gray and this is done very well, as he is likable, yet you're never sure- is he a villain? A misguided hero? Somewhere in between? Sure, it's padded out with cutesy animals, but knowing what becomes of them in the end makes it considerably less innocent. This story is where Seuss's message is, and it still makes it through. The score by John Powell is epic and the animation and designs are gorgeous, which add great atmosphere in the darker parts of the movie. The environmental message is very un-subtle, and people who dislike that in other movies will dislike it here. One need only listen to the cut song "Biggering" to see how powerful this story could have gotten. And they just didn't have the guts. But beauty does manage to seep through in places, and this is one movie that I'd highly recommend seeing only parts of.

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• Green is Money

  cultfilmfreaksdotcom2012-03-04

  If you think Hollywood is the greediest moneygrubbing plastic city in the world, think again – and welcome to Thneedville, where every overly promoted, abundantly commercialized item costs bundles and, scariest of all, there are no trees. Enter Ted, a kid smitten with a gorgeous girl Audrey, who has only one wish – painted along the back of her house are tall skinny things resembling straws harboring wispy windblown cotton candy. These are the long forgotten trees, and she wants one, a real one, badly. Through his wise old granny, Ted learns of The Once-ler, a hermit residing on the outskirts of the shallow metropolis: walled in and policed by a wicked, and very short, dictator O'Hare. But Ted gets easily past the border and, using his power scooter, zips into a dark flatland where he finds a faceless hermit in a spooky house. Here he learns the backstory and what the film's all about: Once-ler was once a poor farm boy who discovered a land abundant in nature and cutesy animals. He realizes, to make his dream invention – what he calls the Thneed (think of a Bionic Snuggie) – he has to chop down a tree: which summons our titular hero, The Lorax. This mustached, peanut-shaped, blunt yet lovable orange creature (voiced by Danny DeVito) is an underdog environmentalist that can only point the Once-ler toward wisdom. But becoming a powerful businessman is Once-ler's priority – and his Thneed's a big hit until all the trees are gone. Now we're back with Ted, whose input means very little – especially since the title character (who has surprisingly minimal screen time and plot relevance) is history and the real tale has been told. Nevertheless, Ted's final mission is to plant one last seed. Although the greedy O'Hare – who sells clean air in cans and fake trees for big bucks – wants him stopped. Kids will enjoy the wonderfully vivid animation and the cutesy characters, especially a bear cub and singing fish residing in the tree-laden forest. Here's where the most involving, fast-paced action occurs. And the overly obvious environmental message works in scenes where each tree falls to their death: like best friends dying slowly, and painfully, before your very eyes. But once the movie ends with a corny singalong about letting it grow, you'll realize this ninety-minute tale was really just a message with lots of vibrant color: Other than a greedy entrepreneur cutting down trees to make money and then realizing his mistake, not much really happens. Yet the real moral of this anti-capitalist movie is that it grossed a whopping $70 million this weekend. But since spending, and making, large amounts of money is a bad thing, you can do the producers a favor: instead of paying $14 bucks to watch THE LORAX, go plant a tree! For More Reviews: www.cultfilmfreaks.com

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