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:

Christmas Marathon: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)

A few weeks ago, I posted about the 2000 version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  You can click HERE if you want to read my take on it. I definitely was NOT  huge fan of it.  However, this one I am a big fan of and whether its on DVD or when it airs on TV around Christmas time, I always sit down to watch it.

HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS (1966)

This was originally a TV movie.  Till today, I think it still airs every year regardless of all the new ones that have showed up and come and go.  I haven’t checked the TV schedule this year for holiday showings.  I’m not even sure they are out but it should be there.  I’m going to take a guess that mostly everyone knows what this is.  However, just in case, I’ll do a short description.  How the Grinch Stole Christmas is about the Grinch that stole Christmas.  No, no…sorry about that, my smart ass self broke loose.  Its about the Grinch that lives up in the mountains surrounding a small town called Who-ville.  The Whos are enthusiastic about Christmas and celebrate it thoroughly with presents, a big feast, decorations, and singing.  The Grinch somehow hates Christmas and comes up with a scheme to stop it from coming, even if it means stealing everything away.  He doesn’t get that of course.  The message behind this movie is summed up by one of their quotes “Maybe Christmas, he thought… doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps… means a little bit more!”

And that is exactly what makes this movie a Christmas classic: The meaning of Christmas.  Well, and also Boris Karloff does an awesome job doing the voice of the narrator and the Grinch.  I realized this time that I really do enjoy the character of Cindy Lou Who even in the animation.  She is a “sweet little tot”.  I always have the urge to imitate her during the whole Christmas tree conversation with the Grinch.  Not to mention they animate her like an angel in her sleeping gown so even more adorable.  Plus, it has nice fun music, which is always a plus in my book for any Christmas movie.

And I can’t resist to put on a little video:

This is simply a beautiful animation.

Any of you still sit down to watch this? Seems like my Christmas movies are randomly getting older, but no worries, the next one is more recent.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)

Christmas month starts in about 10 days.  I still haven’t had time to figure out what to do exactly yet and I already have two Christmas movie reviews up.  This is the second movie on the flight back that I saw, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I love Dr. Seuss and for many people reading my past blogs, you would’ve probably already figured that one out.  I’ve watched almost all the movies on Dr. Seuss in the recent years.  This year’s The Lorax was simply fantastic.  You can go and check out my review if you’d like.  I loved Horton Hears a Who!.  In 2000, How The Grinch Stole Christmas was released in human version.  I’m sure it was long awaited.

For those who don’t know, this is based on the Dr. Seuss children’s book about The Grinch that lived on top of the hill of Whoville and hated the noise and the presents that Christmas brought.  He lived with his dog and one day, he comes up with the idea that he will steal Christmas so that it would never have to hear all the joyful noise and music and fuss.  He swoops in and strips the houses of all its decorations and gifts and lights, even all the food.  The story is that he learns that Christmas isn’t about all these materialistic things but rather the spirit can’t die because it means more than that.  The animated version that plays on TV every year is very similar and has Boris Karloff that does the narration, pretty much a reading of the storybook and its quite memorable. It doesn’t escape my Christmas movie marathon every year.  Its tradition to watch it.  I’ll talk more about it when we get into Christmas month in December.

So here we have the revamped version with humans.  Jim Carrey plays the Grinch.  Cindy Lou Who is played by Taylor Momsen and a whole bunch of other actors that I can’t recognize.  It doesn’t matter and I don’t even want to look it up because this movie was pretty bad.  The only factor I thought was worth reclaiming a bit was Taylor Momsen as Cindy Lou.  I actually enjoyed her throughout the whole movie.  Well, maybe using “actually” is not a correct term.  Taylor Momsen is a young actress I do enjoy, even when I was watching Gossip Girl and her role as Jenny Humphrey.  As for Jim Carrey,  he did this role way over exaggerated and the dialogue sometimes was too much, the actions were too much, the additional parts was too much.  They tried to give the movie an extra storyline telling us the reason as to why the Grinch lives on the hilltop and hates the Whos and Christmas, and even went to the extent to give it a bit of romantic spark.  I’m not sure if that was extremely necessary but I guess when you do a full length movie, they had to, or else the source material wouldn’t have been enough to hold up without feeling like it was dragging.  Still, I probably wouldn’t watch this movie ever again.  I spent most of the movie rolling my eyes and thinking when it would end, hoping that maybe it’ll get better.  It didn’t happen.

Other than Taylor Momsen, the other part I’d give to this movie as a positive was the soundtrack.  I owned the soundtrack even before I saw the movie and its a nice one.  There are some fun tunes and nice rendition of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”.  Faith Hill’s version and the movie version of Where are you Christmas is definitely nice to listen to.  There are a few other tracks that I love.

With that said, the movie experience was pretty bad but feel free to go ahead and listen to the soundtrack.   It is a nice fun Christmas music sountrack.  Although, it is sad that I have to list one of Jim Carrey’s movies as bad as this because I really do like him as an actor ever since the beginning.

As usual, I’d love to hear what you think? Did you enjoy it? I want to hear what you liked if you did? Maybe I’ll see it in a different light, who knows, right?