Wacky and wondrous - it's bountiful fun for children of all ages.
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! (2008)
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Reviews Counted:130
Fresh:102
Rotten:28
Average Rating:7/10
Consensus: Horton Hears A Who! is both whimsical and heartwarming, and is the rare Dr. Seuss adaptation that stays true to the spirit of the source material.
Theatrical Release:21-03-2008
Synopsis: On the fifteenth of May, in the jungle of Nool, in the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool. He was splashing...enjoying the jungle's great joys...When Horton the elephant heard a small... On the fifteenth of May, in the jungle of Nool, in the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool. He was splashing...enjoying the jungle's great joys...When Horton the elephant heard a small noise. With his signature evocative and rhyming text, writer and cartoonist Dr. Seuss, an American treasure whose books have delighted generations of young people, opens one of his most beloved tales, Horton Hears a Who! Now, over fifty years since Seuss, whose real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel, published this perennial favorite, the makers of ICE AGE and comedy giants Jim Carrey and Steve Carell, bring it to life in a way never before experienced. For the first time, a motion picture transports audiences into Dr. Seuss' incredible imagination, through state-of-the-art CG animation. DR. SEUSS' HORTON HEARS A WHO! (TM) is Seuss as you want to experience his work at the movies - and as it was meant to be seen. The film, like Seuss' book, presents an imaginative elephant named Horton (Carrey) who hears a faint cry for help coming from a tiny speck of dust floating through the air. Although Horton doesn't know it yet, that speck houses an entire city named Who-ville, inhabited by the microscopic Whos, led by the Mayor (Carell). Despite being ridiculed and threatened by his neighbors, who think he has lost his mind, Horton is determined to save the particle...because "a person's a person, no matter how small." Horton's eight-word explanation for his actions embodies an idea both simple and profound, and which means so much, to so many. The film provides more food for thought, having Horton explains to his skeptical friends: "If you were way out in space, and you looked down at where we live, we would look like a speck." Then there's Horton's code...his motto... that, "an elephant's faithful 100 percent" - pointing to his honesty and determination to never abandon his mission to find a new home for the speck that houses the incredible world of Who-ville. These philosophical declarations point to Seuss' unique ability to take complex issues and boil them down into understandable thoughts that anybody, at any age, could understand. It all comes together through the vision of a master storyteller, the magic of computer animation, and the special alchemy of three generations of comedy stars - Carrey and Carell are joined by the legendary Carol Burnett, as well as cutting-edge talents Will Arnett, Isla Fisher, Amy Poehler , Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill - to create an all-audience comedy event. --© Fox [More]
Starring: Jim Carrey, Steve Carell, Seth Rogen, Dane Cook
Starring: Jim Carrey, Steve Carell, Seth Rogen, Dane Cook, Amy Poehler, Jesse McCartney, Isla Fisher, Dan Fogler, Will Arnett, Jonah Hill, Laura Ortiz, Jaime Pressly, Josh Flitter, Carol Burnett
Director: Jimmy Hayward, Steve Martino
Director: Jimmy Hayward, Steve Martino
Screenwriter: Cinco Paul, Ken Daurio, Jon Vitti, Mike Reiss
Producer: Bob Gordon
Composer: John Powell
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Reviews for Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! is by far the best of the recent movie features that were based on late author and artist Theodor Seuss Geisel's beloved children's books.
What distinguishes Horton Hears a Who! from the other recent Dr. Seuss film adaptations is that it is not one of the worst movies ever made.
Just because the live-action Seusses have dialed down expectations doesn't mean that Horton shouldn't aspire to more than time-wasting mediocrity.
Jim Carrey returns in his second starring role opposite Seuss' Whos, but this time the folks behind Ice Age have the good sense to keep the tale animated.
What could be translated into a wonderful and even educational thirty-minute short is stretched and padded to the brink when forced to fill out a feature-length running time.
For the first time, Hollywood has made a whimsical, witty, feature-length version of Dr. Seuss that's neither overblown nor smutty nor emotionally hollow.
Seuss lovers may now heave a sigh of relief. Unlike those behind the recent live-action grotesqueries The Grinch and Cat in the Hat, the makers of the Horton Hears a Who! do well by the great, good medic of metrical writing.
A computer-animated feature that strikes an amiable balance between honoring the text and the dictates of contemporary animation, the film is as good as one could hope for in this era of post-literate impatience.
The celeb voices just distractingly pull you out of a world that's supposed to sound like an imagination run wild, not half the cast of The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
For adults, its charms eventually wear thin, but there are enough loud special effects and scary sequences to hold the attention of its preteen audience.
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! is the first feature-length Seuss movie adaptation to adequately evoke the warmhearted eccentricity of Theodore Geisel's classic children's books.
Horton Hears a Who! doesn't enter the live-action realm, which is a good thing, but the lengthened result has its own charm and is enjoyable in a family-friendly sort of way, even if it feels a little like Dr. Seuss by way of Ice Age.
Although the voice talent is good and the animation amazing, Horton Hears a Who! has never needed more than Geisel's simple words and drawings to get its points across, brilliantly.
The overarching lesson for kids is to trust those who claim to hear voices, as well as compulsively worry that any time they bust out a dust cloth, they may be destroying thousands of civilizations. Huh.
Blows up what's essentially a sweet little fable into something far bigger and louder, but...retains just enough of the original's charm to make good family fare.
It would be pretty hard to muck up this Dr. Seuss story and its kid-friendly parable about the rights of all beings, no matter their size or shape, to the basic freedoms of life and liberty.
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