Horton Hears a Who! (2008)

After almost a week break from movie reviews, I’m ready to bring it on again.  I have a few more to write but at least now I’m a bit more charged up. Here we go! 🙂

Based on the children’s Dr. Seuss book Horton Hears a Who!, this animation is one of the first Dr. Seuss to be made in animation again.  I watched it on Saturday since I knew from a few posts floating around saying that it was Dr. Seuss’s birthday.  I had to celebrate it in my own way and seeing that I had already reviewed The Lorax before, this seemed to be a good choice.

Director: Jimmy Hayward, Steve Martino

Cast: Jim Carrey, Steve Carell, Carol Burnett, Will Arnett, Seth Rogen, Dan Fogler, Isla Fisher

In the jungle of Nool, Horton the elephant (Jim Carrey) is minding his own business with his own day when he heard a little yelp coming from a speck floating around.  He imagines a man and his family in need on the speck so in case they will be in danger he runs after the speck to save it and ends up catching it on a clover.  When he says this story to the uptight and snobbish Kangaroo (Carol Burnett), she doesn’t hear anything and doesn’t believe him and warns him to not spread the nonsense to others.  He disregards her and then realizes that he needs to yell to allow these little people to hear him and he yells HELLO.  This one Hello travels down to the world on the speck called Whoville.  No one is aware of their tiny existence in the world until his one HELLO reaches the Mayor (Steve Carell).  The Mayor who is a slight goofball but notices that Whoville is incurring weird changes and when Horton confirms him of their tiny presence, Mayor goes to ask the scientist Dr. Mary Lou Larue (Isla Fisher) who predicts disaster if they were actually a small city.  It is then the Mayor asks Horton to help him move the speck and its clover to a safer location to help regain stability in Whoville.  As the Mayor tries to protect his city while convincing the Council about the dangers, Horton is also with his own problems as Kangaroo does everything to remove the speck from him because she believes all this is nonsense.

This animation is wonderfully adapted.  Its funny and awesome entertainment.  To start off, we have really good vocal talents, which is possibly one of the most important contributing aspects to a great animation.  We have Jim Carrey in the lead role as Horton.  I’m a huge fan of Jim Carrey and his voices along with his humor.  It probably all began when I first saw him in either Mask or Ace Ventura.  But then, we’re not to discuss that, but point being, in this one, he’s crazy fun and enthusiastic.  In his opposite lead, we have the Mayor voiced by Steve Carell.  I haven’t seen a lot from him but this man is quite comedic as well.  In this role, he’s just a super good goofball. He has funny reactions and exclamations.

I love the way they spiced up the dialogue but kept the book dialogue with a narrator in the back to help coordinate between the two worlds.  Its really funny most of the time and whenever I watch this, it puts a gigantic grin on my face and I start laughing out loud in a lot of parts.  It never hits the too serious area which is awesome because this is aimed towards children.  The colors are also fantastic because they are bright and sharp.  It helps keep the movie in the uplifting mood even if there is some dangers lurking about.

This is absolutely great family fun! Its great for all ages and guarantees lots of smiles and laughter.  It has amazing actors doing the voices aside from just Jim Carrey and Steve Carell.  Everyone does a fantastic job in their roles.  Its heartwarming, endearing, fun, comedic, enjoyable. I think this trailer captures it perfectly and its also the song I love renditioned a la Horton Hears a Who! Style 🙂

Before I let you go, I’d like to recommend this movie (if you haven’t realized yet) 🙂 And also as every Dr. Seuss story, we always have a little lesson to be learned so I’d have to share it here to end this off: