The Lorax - Review

Alright... we're over a week into 2013, and as you may have notice, I have not posted my picks of the Top 10 best and worst films of 2012. Why is that? To be honest, at the beginning of every year, this is usually when I'm playing catch up with the films I missed, trying to see as many of them as I can in order to make a reasonably accurate list. While that does mean taking in some good films every so often, (namely the studios' run of Oscar contenders), it usually involves watching the crap that I either missed, forgot about, or skipped... like The Lorax. When I heard that Universal was adapting The Lorax, one of Dr. Seuss's slightly lesser-known works, I actually thought that while it had the chance of working as a feature film, the studio would likely find a way to make it suck (spoiler alert.. the movie sucks). This isn't a huge surprise, as there have been multiple feature length adaptations of various Seuss books (both live action and animated), though not one of them has been any good (excluding the classic animated shorts, many of those are great). It boils down to many factors as to why, one of which is that stretching out a 20 page kids book to a feature length screenplay is incredibly difficult. While I will forever maintain that you can make a good movie out of anything, it takes great care and effort to pull off these kinds of stories... and there in lies the problem. The studio and filmmakers just never put any real effort or care into these stories... relegating the works of one of the most creative and flat-out brilliant kids authors into cheap, shallow, corporate-produced, Hollywood products (you know... the kind of thing this book preached against).

The film opens in the town of Thneed-Ville, a walled off, almost semi-dystopian, city completely made of plastic, with nary a tree or any kind of foliage in sight. In fact, since there's no trees, the town runs completely on synthetic air made by the town's ruling corporation, O'Hare, who sells it to the town's citizens. When the twelve-year-old, Ted (played by Zac Efron), hears his friend and crush Audrey (Taylor Swift) mention her longing to see a real life tree, Ted ventures outside of town limits to try and find one and impress his would-be girlfriend. His only hope is the fabled Once-ler, a man who lives miles away from Thneed-ville, whose surrounding area has now been relegated to a desolate wasteland. The Once-Ler then tells the story of how the land used to be a great forest, full of trees, animals, and fresh air... until it was ruined when he opened a business that quickly grew into a giant corporation and swiftly exploited the area's resources until there was no more. Both Ted and the Once-ler ponder... can the land return to it's once former glory???

One challenge I often encounter with this blog is trying to review a movie from a purely objective standpoint. While I do my best to not let my any personal bias, foreknowledge, or inherent fanboyism influence a review, that is often easier said than done. I mention this all because I happen to think that the book on which this movie is based is one of Dr. Seuss's best works and one of the most important children's books ever written. Okay, I admit that it has it's somewhat preachy undertones and a slightly simplistic and one-sided perspective on the issues of environmentalism and commercialism (I know it's a kids book, but still). That said, it had good concept that touched upon important issues, complete with a rather dark tone that still managed to retain Seuss's trademark rhymes and rhetoric. Not to mention, despite the dramatic subject matter, it still had a cautiously optimistic ending. To adapt such a book into a feature length film would be tricky, but when it comes to feature length movies based on kids books, I honestly think The Lorax was one of the more adapt-able pieces... at the very least,more-so than The Cat in The Hat or The Grinch. The simplistic nature of the message could have been expanded upon, and a good team of filmmakers could have told a compelling story of environmentalism and corporate excess, watered down enough for kids but also giving some substance for the adults. It could have been done well... but it was not.

Okay, so I'll just get this out of the way. How is the movie strictly as an adaptation of the book. In a word... TERRIBLE! While in the book, the Once-Ler's appearance was never revealed (aside from his hands), the movie gives him a face... one of a somewhat baby-faced and sympathetic demeanor (doesn't work). Even the book's main plot, about the Once-Ler's rise to power and subsequent devastation of the forest, is relegated to more of a subplot. Most of the book's content is actually told in a quick, three-minute musical number. Instead, it spends more time focusing on two different stories, one of which is a sort of "bro-mance" between the Lorax and Once-ler (it's weird, don't ask) and the other, I'll get into in a bit. The main character in the movie is actually the aforementioned Ted, who technically was in the book as the boy who listens to the Once-Ler's story. Still, they give him way more screen time, and there in lies the problem. Everything else that made the book so well-known is either gone or severely downplayed. It's an awful adaptation and it really has no reason to be this bad!

Of course, a film can't be strictly judged on how well it follows it's source material. The question of how the film stands on it's own... it still sucks. As I mentioned, the main story focuses more on Ted both subsequently trying to impress his would-be girlfriend Audrey and fighting with Thneed-ville's greedy corporate magnate, Mr O'Hare. The characters are bland, empty, and cliche, and the voice acting is, as predicted, nothing special. The only person who actually got a chuckle or two out of me was Betty White as Ted's eccentric grandmother, but that's Betty White for you, she's always awesome. The rest of the film, is just kind of annoying. The film spends way too much time with the cutesy animals of the forest, which wouldn't be a problem if they weren't annoying as hell. It really does hurt your film's message when the characters that are getting trashed are the one's who get on your nerves the most. It also has a few musical numbers, all of which suck. Honestly, even without the book to go off of, the movie is, at it's best, a below average cgi kids film that's too stupid and irritating to enjoy. The only real positive thing I can say is that some of the animation is nice, namely the design of the forest and Truffula trees. It's nothing amazing but it's at least a reasonably decent looking movie. Other than that, I don't have much to say.

So that's The Lorax... and it sucks. It may seem like I'm being a little harsh, trashing what's essentially an innocent kids movie. But still, despite any bias or strong opinions I may have, I just can't think of anything about this film that I can honestly recommend. It sucks, plain and simple. If you haven't seen it yet, don't bother.

My Score: 1.5 out of 5!