The Lorax Review - Second Draft

CONTAINS SPOILERS: Aaron Lockman Reviews Movies

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS usually contains spoilers. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

When choosing to adapt a Dr. Seuss story for the big screen, one is faced with the precarious task of taking a very simple premise and adding an entire intricate backstory. The trick, which has succeeded in some Seuss movies and failed spectacularly in others, is to make the audience believe that the backstory really was happening behind the borders of the picture book. The plot, while it must be intricate in order to fill an hour and a half, must still be simple and effective. The Cat in the Hat did not do this. Horton Hears a Who and The Lorax did (Did The Grinch Who Stole Christmas do this? Someone please tell me. I know, I know, I’m a horrible critic).

So yes. I friggin LOVED this movie. I LOVED the story of Ted, who started his search setting out to impress his true love, but ended up getting caught into an adventure for an entirely different reason. I LOVED the friendship between the Once-ler and the Lorax, and how the Once-ler’s mostly harmless intentions ended up hurting not only the earth, but his only friend. I LOVED the idea of Thneedville being an oasis of happy, prosperous ignorance in the middle of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. And for that matter, I loved the movie’s idea of apocalypse - not a matter of impending doom and quick heroics, but of what lies at the end of gradual decline and of humanity’s insane ability to avoid thinking about the uncomfortable.

I LOVED the voice cast. Danny DeVito brought a gruff charm to the Lorax that was always present in the book. Ed Helms was very good as the Once-ler, effectively portraying both a young, sarcastic, headstrong man who is always sure of his own superiority, and a sad old man who has learned from the young man’s mistakes too late. Betty White was hilarious (as always) as the witty, insane grandmother we all wish we had. Elmarie Wendel (from the wonderful old 90’s sitcom Third Rock From The Sun) was simply delicious as the Once-ler’s surly Aunt Grizelda. Jenny Slate was adorably fun as the protagonist’s nasally, shallow mother, and Taylor Swift did a surprisingly good job of providing a voice for the love interest that was both sweet and nuanced. All the other voices were certainly adequate for the film’s purposes. The only one that really irked me was Zac Efron, the voice of Ted, the protagonist. The kid was supposed to be like, what, fourteen or fifteen? Zac sounded like the ‘teenagers’ on Glee look - twenty-four at the youngest. However, it didn’t really detract from the film and you got used to it after a bit.

And if you’ve seen the trailer, you know the visuals are stunning. The thing that made them stand out, though, is that they very much preserved the Seussian style and spirit; goofy, but not schmaltzy. The Once-ler’s house, in particular, looked completely identical to its 2-D counterpart - and, more importantly, felt identical too. Many things about the film felt like that, but the things that didn’t stood out a LOT. More on that in a moment.

I loved the animals of the Truffula forest. They were the indescribably adorable comic fodder for the film. I liked that the Once-ler interacted with them more than in the book, and so was truly horrified when he indirectly forced them to leave.

HOWEVER: I sometimes felt that the animal-related comedy really went over the top. Remember how I said that visuals kept the Seussian spirit by being goofy but not schmaltzy? The comedy in the film came awfully close to that line. It danced over that line in the most irritating manner possible, like those annoying people in fifth-grade capture the flag who dance into your territory just quickly enough so that you can’t tag them.

For instance: There were scenes when the animals, in their seemingly inexhaustible cuteness, began to eat various objects that the Once-ler had brought with him, such as marshmallows and playing cards. While it was funny, it raised an unintended issue: why doesn’t that have any adverse effects? These animals have eaten only Truffula fruit their entire lives. What if there were a scene where the Humming Fish chokes on the playing card, or if the Barbaloots become sick from the marshmallows? Humans don’t just pollute by spewing gloopity-gloop into the water. There are other, simpler ways - like littering - that the film’s young audience could better relate to. Instead of using comedy for the sake of the film’s message, oftentimes it just used comedy for the sake of comedy.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Aaron! Stop analyzing everything! It’s a children’s movie. It is meant to keep a child’s attention span, not satisfy your need for there to be a deeper meaning in everything. Ease up on it a little bit.”

And you’re kind of right. And with any other film, I would. But that is not what Dr. Seuss would want. The reason Theodore Geisel started writing children’s books is because there was (and still is) an appalling lack of juvenile literature that didn’t seek to do more than simply “keep a child’s attention span.” He wanted children to be able to think AND have fun. Which is my primary complaint with the truly awful The Cat in The Hat film. Everybody’s primary complaint, really.

But where was I?

Oh, right, things I didn’t like about The Lorax.

The musical numbers. The music wasn’t bad, per se, but it lacked any original style or flair. It just felt like the generic happy music that most children’s films have these days. Some musical numbers were placed effectively throughout the film in a way that moved the story forward, and some were not (more on that later).

The marketing surrounding the movie. I mean, seriously? The Lorax is selling SUV’s? That is completely deplorable. BUT, that’s not the people making the movie. That is Hollywood being complete jerks. So I’m willing to waive that criticism.

To effectively explain the thing that irked me most about this movie, I must first explain three things: a) My favorite scene, b) my second favorite scene, and c) how my second favorite scene quickly descended into my least favorite after about sixty seconds.

My favorite scene came towards the beginning of the film. In it, Ted is trying to find the exit to the high metal barricade that separates Thneedville from the rest of the world so he can try and find the Once-ler. He does so by opening an imposing steel door in the side of the wall, which takes him into a huge cavern where gooey black schloppity-schlopp from the city’s machinery is being emptied into a canal, flowing to the outside. The sight is horrifying - particularly to Ted, who has never seen anything outside the safe little bubble of his world.

But that’s nothing compared to what Ted discovers outside the wall, on the threshold of the outside world. Off to the horizon, he can see nothing but barren purple soil and smog, as well as ruins - of a stone roadway, of an old bridge. Riding along at top speed on his bright red motor-scooter-mono-cycle-segway-thingy-I-want-one-really-bad, he nearly kills himself running into the dark, looming remains of an abandoned Super-Axe Hacker.

This was the sequence that defined the movie for me. By showing Ted escaping from his perfect world and finding a horrible, mysterious truth that he can’t believe he never knew about, this movie took a very simple, effective environmental message and used it to create a stunning, disturbing, hypothetical, dystopian future. As with all good modern dystopian fiction, there were echoes of 1984 and Farenheit 451 in there. The Lorax shows us a society not unlike our own, were the happy people of Thneedville live fake, plastic lives - not caring about where their products come from, or where their waste goes, or whether or not their society is sustainable. Ted, by discovering the wasteland outside, discovers that the Thneedvillites’ commercialist utopia can’t be achieved without first destroying everything around it. And that is what truly hits home for me, because that is simply our society taken to an extreme.

My second favorite scene is at the very end of the movie. Ted, Audrey, and Betty-White-Crazy-Grammy have just toppled the statue of Aloysius O’Hare and whacked a hole in the artificial turf in the middle of Thneedville town square, and are trying to plant the Truffula seed in the ground for it to grow. The people of the town are understandably confused and miffed, and start to circle our gang of heroes to stop them. But before they can, Ted climbs up on a nearby bulldozer and proceeds to knock down a portion of the city wall, exposing the desolate outside world for the whole population to see.

And I LOVE that. It’s a perfect way to expand the point Seuss made in his books; that the Lorax is not the one who is going to fix things. He merely speaks for the trees; he cannot act for them. We are the ones who must help the Earth, and the ones who must spread that awareness.

Ted gives an impassioned speech, pointing out that everything is not, in fact, perfect in Thneedville and that their society is based on a lie, etc., etc. That’s all good, but THEN the movie takes a turn for the bad. The townspeople stare in shock at the barren landscape for a moment, and instead of exclaiming “Um. . . WHY is there a desolate barren landscape outside the city? What does this mean?” they immediately launch into a musical number about how they feel like they should give the Truffula seed a chance to grow. They’re not horrified or angry or even surprised. They just launch into their Disney-esque musical number, with the bad guy Aloysius O’Hare being publicly embarrassed (via slapstick comedy) but not really punished in any effective way. All the people of Thneedville are suddenly hunky-dory, despite the complete economic and social upheaval that the ousting of O’Hare will cause. Many jobs in the city rely on O’Hare - and now that they know he’s a greedy dirtbag, will they still buy air from him? Will he go broke, like the Once-ler did? If so, the people of Thneedville are doomed because he kind of seems to have a monopoly on the bottled air industry. And one Truffula tree in the middle of town just can’t produce enough oxygen for everyone.

I am not defending the actions of Aloysius O’Hare. I am merely pointing out that, in the words of John Green, “The truth resists simplicity.” Having a complete, abrupt, simplistic turnaround as its ending diminished the positive impact of the film on me. But I LOVED the epilogue, which featured the old and scraggly Once-ler finally leaving his Lerkim and looking out into a world that is still barren, but filled with hope in the form of hundreds of small Truffula buds. And the Lorax and all his friends start to come back, and the Lorax and the Once-ler reunite, and I get chills! It is the constant contrast between amazing scenes and stupid scenes that frustrates me when watching this movie.

But the truth is that I’m coming up on 2000 words and I’ve mentioned 80% of what I didn’t like and about 50% of what I did. And that’s the final thing that I like about The Lorax: that it promotes conversation. There is so much more to say about this film - and I encourage you to do so! If you agree/disagree with anything I’ve said or have opinions of your own about this movie, please feel free to continue the conversation with me by email (aaron.lockman13@thorntonacademy.org), Twitter (@TheLockperson), Tumblr (Lockmusings), or in person (do I need parentheses for this?). Or just talk/write/blog about it yourself! You don’t need me.

Because, as the Once-ler points out, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” Caring about and talking about and discussing these things is the first step in making our world a better place, and there are so few movies that encourage us to do that these days. And that, in the end, is why I approve of The Lorax - and why I think that Dr. Seuss would have, too.