ANI-MOVIES, *The Lorax

A year after the unmatched Dr. Seuss first put out his book The Lorax, an animated TV special premiered on TV in 1972 by DePatie–Freleng Enterprises who most cartoon fans would remember from the Pink Panther show. Decades after Dr. Seuss passed on, there was a mad rush to turn most of his beloved stories into full-length motion pictures, some of which were in suspiciously done in live-action. There was an animated movie version of Horton Hears A Who put out by Blue Sky Studios in 2008 but wasn't a big success. Since the public was getting more concerned about climate change, someone at Universal Pictures thought it would be a good time to do a big budget CGI adaptation of The Lorax too, despite the fact that is a uniform short children's story that just barely filled the TV airtime of the original special. As their first completely animated film after the first installment of Despicable Me, Illumination stuck an entire mountain range promoting their extended edition of this classic story into a whopping 86-minute-long movie. Directed by Illumination regular Chris Renaud, this film turned out to be nothing more than a product endorsement for several companies to put their logos on, most of which were highly to blame for the environmental screw-ups that there were at the time. It's hard to get behind a film dedicated to conservation when there are entire landfills of Lorax merchandise that no one cared for at the time.

Set in a dystopian wasteland where all the trees have been cut down, the town of the Thneedville is separated from the rest of the world by a giant wall sealing its citizens off from the truth of their outside world. A tween named Ted is pining for his next-door neighbor Audrey who longs to see a real tree. Ted's grandmother tells him to find out what happened to the trees from a stranger living outside the city known as the Once-ler. The movie periodically goes back and forth between the Once-ler telling his tale about he was the one who caused all the trees down to make a product with a thousand uses called the Thneed which attracted the warnings of the mystical Lorax who speaks for the trees, while going back to Ted hearing this story over several nights. The film's flashbacks have the audacity to show the past Once-ler being a retro hipster who quickly gives into corporate greed and totally ignoring the Lorax's warnings even though the two of them develop a small friendship when he first starts out his business just before the fuzzy orange spirit goes back up into the heavens. When the flashbacks are finished, the rest of the movie is one pointless chase sequence with Ted trying to plant the last seed that the Once-ler gave him to show the others in Thneedville much to the chagrin of the town's founder. The only saving grace is that this version of the book has a conclusion that brings a slightly more enlightening conclusion to it.

The Lorax visually is one of the most "Seusseian" of all the movie adaptations of all the other animated and live-action movies based on Dr. Seuss' library. The design of the characters, the creatures, the buildings, and the backdrop feel like their right out of one of Seuss' books. The rest of the film just stuffs in celebrities in the roles of various characters not even appearing in the original story, along with pop culture sub-references and radio-wannabe songs. There is no substance to this with bad writing, zero motivations, and is completely clueless when it comes to what message it's trying to deliver. This might be a reasonable thing to show to toddlers to keep their attention for a little time while the parents take a quick nap during the middle of the day but otherwise is not worth a look or your attention.