Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax

A Lorax movie?
This idea won’t work.
Preaching to children –
You’ll look like a jerk

Can it be fun?
Not one little bit
The hero’s a lump
Of yellow-orange shit

He’s angry, he’s mad
He’s looks like a Cheeto
Doncha worry, kids loooove
Danny DeVito

So score one to Universal
For showing some class
This Lorax you see,
Could have sucked ass.

Ok, adults talking now:

With such color, curve and fluff, the production design of Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax feels like it was thrown up on by a bubble gum commercial. Watching this film made me feel like a human euphemism.

The Lorax was a favorite book of mine once upon a time. But I never thought a movie adaptation was a good idea. Preachy, angry, accusatory, one-sided, villain-less – these aren’t generally good qualities from which to attract children to a theater. And Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax does have exactly the problems one would imagine – The Lorax himself isn’t especially likable. The villain has been personified as a corporate titan/midget with an Edna Mode haircut and the story still comes off as preachy.

Directors Chris Renaud and Kyle Balda decided to make this abut a boy and girl. That’s a good idea. Their town, Thneedville, is 100% plastic and shiny; it constantly looks like it’s just been unwrapped. The girl Audrey (Taylor Swift) wants a tree. The boy Ted (Zac Efron) decides this is his in, but only one person knows about trees, the hermit Once-ler (Ed Helms) who lives outside the walled city. So Ted has to escape to the stix. The most fun in this movie is here, watching Ted ride his motorized unicycle – as he escapes, the parents in the audience will be reminded of The Truman Show. Does that make Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax a biblical fall-from-grace parable as well? Sort of. Thneedville is presented as idyllic, yes. And it’s the girl who plants the seed in the boy’s mind that he should do something reckless for her. The general idea of the fall from grace tale, however, is that man chooses knowledge over paradise. That is the nature of man. This isn’t so much a choice of knowledge as much as a burgeoning idea that paradise itself is somehow flawed. The Garden of Eden wasn’t flawed; man simply chose something else. That makes a big difference when you discuss human nature and motivation.

Outside the walls is a giant graveyard and the Once-ler is the sole mortician remaining. His tale is cautionary – he chopped down all the trees to make thneeds and turned a paradise into a parking lot (another mild Adam and Eve parallel). Once the first Truffola tree is cut down, The Lorax himself appears to lecture us on environmentalism. He hangs out for the rest of the flashback talking tree rights. That’s only the part shown; it’s possible he gets into civil disobedience and campaign reform issues in the outtakes.

And The Lorax is a warning for all future capitalists – resources are limited; don’t let greed control your ambition. If only this were stated in some sort of oversimplified series of cartoon drawings so that I could understand it. Truffola trees, the endangered species here, make a good metaphor for any limited resource. Personally, I prefer oil. It’s not renewable; it’s definitely in limited supply and oil magnates tend to be the worst kind of capitalists. The message, however, not the commodity, is the important part.

For once, FOX news actually has a legitimate beef. Well, assuming they are the spokespeople for the poor haunted voiceless billionaire oilmen out there. And assuming “fair and balanced” news should include attacks on the consistently underfunded side. Their previous target, The Muppets, may not have had an agenda, but The Lorax sure as heck does. For that I applaud The Lorax. An Inconvenient Truth is not going to make those waves to the next generation. Now if only we could get a Hollywood/Dr. Seuss project to tackle immigration reform. Maybe Go, Dog, Go!

Rated PG, 86 Minutes
D: Chris Renaud, Kyle Balda
W: Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul
Genre: PC
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Seven-year-old teddy bear loving girls
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Corporate donors to Republican campaigns