Animation Source Forums

(Edited...added an item in the spoilers)

Now that it came out on DVD/Blu Ray today, I finally had a chance to purchase and watch Universal Studios' CGI reboot of Dr. Seuss' classic story The Lorax (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1482459). And I wasn't disappointed! I have to admit it. Especially given what utter disasters the live-action, makeup and prosthetics-heavy reboots of How The Grinch Stole Christmas and The Cat In The Hat were. Those other two ended up far worse than the original animated versions of Dr. Seuss' stories. But I think this new CGI movie version of The Lorax actually holds equal ground with the original animated version (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213065)!

And here's why. Spoiler time (don't want to have it spoiled for you before you watch? Don't read on. Simple.

Hidden text : click to show

It just came out on DVD and Blu Ray. Trust me...purchase or at least rent it. And see for yourself.

Here's a trailer for the movie...




And, as a comparison, here's the original animated version of the book, in two complete vids (believe me, it's not too long, and it's worth the watch)...

I will defiantly have to watch this movie sometime, the trailer looks pretty good.

I do remember watching the original cartoon in biology class before. But I do need a refresher, so I will re-watch it now. xD

Oh you'd surely find it worth the time and cost, M! Either as a rental or, more sensibly, as a purchase!

Now, allow me to follow up to my previous post with some new thoughts and material. First, here's the second "official trailer" for the movie which was floating around. Contains a lot of repeat material, but meh. (Posting continues below the video...)





So I was looking over some sites about the movie and, as usual, this movie received mixed reviews. That is not any real indication of quality in most cases. While people in general will have various and divergent views on movies, we all know professional critics are usually not worth paying much attention to, and usually have no clue how to really review intelligently. But one review (noted on the Wikipedia page about the movie) struck me as relevant:

New York magazine film critic David Edelstein on NPR's All Things Considered strongly objected to the movie, arguing that the Hollywood animation and writing formulas washed out the spirit of the book. "This kind of studio 3-D feature animation is all wrong for the material," he wrote. Demonstrating the poor way the book's text was used in the movie -- how modern cultural styles were pasted over the text -- in this excerpt from the review, Edelstein shows Audrey describing the truffula trees to Ted:

"the touch of their tufts was much softer than silk and they had the sweet smell of fresh butterfly milk" -- and [in the movie] Ted says, "Wow, what does that even mean?" and Audrey says, "I know, right?" So one of the only lines that is from the book, that does have Dr. Seuss' sublime whimsy, is basically made fun of, or at least, dragged down to Earth."

I have to admit, I agree with Edelstein's comment -- the latter half of it anyway. The lines he refers to did seem to do a disservice to Dr. Seuss' narrative and obvious skill as a storyteller. As to the first half of Edelstein's comment, about how "that kind of animation and writing washed out the spirit of the book"? Nuh uh. I disagree. Not only does CGI animation (3-D or 2-D) work far better for a Seuss story (since so many of his characters and art were original and whimsical), but this movie actually does a pretty good job of making corporate greed and runaway consumerism look pretty freaking bad. And while I am neither a liberal nor an eco-extremist, I do happen to think that there is much to condemn in the greed and marketing of big corporations.

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But one other thing that bugged me about the movie was the casting of the primary character, "Ted", the twelve-year-old boy who goes to visit the Once-ler, and ends up with the last Truffula seed. Eeyeah...a TWELVE-YEAR-OLD BOY being voiced by someone twice the character's age? Really? Zac Efron, who voiced him, is 25 years old currently. What sort of power-play, manipulating by a crafty agent, or pull by some producer or studio executive, came up with this dumb idea? Granted, Efron is a major star. But there certainly are plenty of young actors MUCH closer in age to the character than this guy is...and some of them are very popular, and have been in some big-time and successful recent movies. What, exactly, convinced the casting director to bypass those possibilities and give a prepubescent character a post-pubescent voice? If Pixar could pull off casting the character of Russell, in the CGI movie Up, so very well (with this fellow: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2973712), then why did Universal Pictures seem to feel as though no preteen boy actor was up to the task of voicing Ted? *face desk*

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Here's the official webpage for the movie: http://www.theloraxmovie.com/index.php


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Oh, and Mighty? Let me leave you and the others with this quaint and touching little pic to further whet your whistle. lol This is a shot of the animal characters (except "Melvin", the Once-ler's amusing mule), from the movie. Here you have the barbaloots (including two of the primary ones...the young "Pipsqueak", just to the left of center in the foreground, and the overweight barbaloot behind him), the humming fish and the Swomee-swans. Aren't they cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute?

(Pipsqueak, Melvin and the overweight barbaloot - who was given a name by the production team even though you never hear it in the movie...and which escapes me at the moment - are amusing and developed enough to have their own cartoon short in the bonus materials, and to appear in two other shorts as primary characters!)

I love this movie, I had watched it online with bad quality but despite that I found myself enchanted by this movie. My favorite song has to be the one sang by the Onceler, which can be found here --->http://seuss.wikia.com/wiki/How_Bad_Can_I_Be%3F

I'd say I prefer "Let It Grow" from the soundtrack (first embedded video below). But I have to tell you, I LOVE the song they used for the trailers. And wouldn't it figure that, like so many other production companies, they used a song NOT on the soundtrack or in the movie at all? And like other times, I had to go looking for it and digging to find out who it was singing it (and the title of the song), since I'm not really up on modern music too much. Second embedded video below is the successful result of that search.




And the song from the trailers..."Light and Day" by the band "The Polyphonic Spree"

Now, I can't read and reply to everyone's responses since I'm on my phone right now, but overall I did enjoy this movie. Horton Hears a Who, I think, was better simply because they make fun of the weird stuff when it's appropriate to make fun of it. Like how epic and ridiculous all the animals were worked up over one teeny tiny little concept haha. But they made a big deal out of when the clover was lost in the ocean of clovers, you felt a huge lump in your throat. I thought they made appropriate changes, one especially being choosing CGI as a format as opposed to live-action.

As for the Lorax, I enjoy the characters they added, and I enjoy the songs, the actors. All if it I enjoy, or at the very least accept.

But there were a few things I thought would've made the movie AMAZING, and I'm rather sad they didn't go with them because I thought it was the more obvious and better way to go.

1) the trees being gone and what's his name's selfishness could have easily made an air shortage a HUGE conflict for this type of story. So huge that neither he nor the Onceler would even be feared by the audience. Of course the conclusion would end happily and be fixed, but even fear of an air shortage would've been enough to support this movie's plot.

2) I thought there was little reason to be had to make the Onceler 100% good. There's nothing wrong with a character realizing his mistakes later on in life.

3) they should've dragged on how the tearing down of trees was affecting the creatures. Comparing it to the old animated short, the destruction took up the entire...20 minutes? Whereas in the movie, the animals were shoved out of their homes in a single musical number. If they would've adjusted the timing of the movie, taking their time with thst scene would've made it more emotional and powerful.

Now that's the one I haven't seen yet. lol I mean, I saw the Warner Brothers/Looney Tunes version of it, but never the recent CGI movie (which doesn't mean I won't try sometime).


You know, you're probably right about that. They really didn't link Mr. O'Hare's greedy little epiphany in very well with the Once-ler and his Thneed, did they?


Agreed on that too. I do believe they were trying to humanize him as much as possible. But maybe they did go a bit overboard in that area. And I do think they perhaps made him too young. A fresh-faced young twenty-something starting out and trying to make it big was not really the impression I got from the character in the book or the old cartoon. That guy was more a corporate-minded guy, a bit older, shooting for the stars as it were. And rather greedier, more selfish, and colder. And certainly more detached from the impact of his wrong-doings.

That being said, I DO like the redemption aspect. The development of the old Once-ler, locked away (by choice) above his old shop, stewing for years in regrets, "what-might-have-beens", and the longed-for hope behind the Lorax's mysterious "Unless" message. For me, now having lived almost half of my life, I was able to feel a keen sense of what it would be like to be in the Once-ler's shoes...spending all those years in self-imposed exile, having to dwell upon the mistakes of his youth. And this is an old man by this time. You can feel the sorrow...the regret. The long, lonely, bitter years...wondering what it would have been like if he hadn't tossed away the first Thneed in the middle of town after unsuccessfully trying to hawk it. There is a very real sense of sorrow there, and it is palpable...even in his cracking voice and his initial bitter suspicion of Ted. They did that very well in this!

And then, they added to the movie what was left dangling temptingly, but shamefully unresolved, in the cartoon. Hell, even Geisel left it unresolved in the book! What happened after the boy (Ted) walked off with that last Truffula seed. Until this movie, no one ever got to see. It was only left with the Once-ler telling him "plant it, and care for it, and maybe the Lorax will come back some day". In this, we actually not only get to see Ted do that, but we get to see the Lorax indeed come back, pay a visit to the now-aged Once-ler, and give him a pat on the back (figuratively and literally) and "you done good, beanpole". And when the Once-ler lays eyes on him, and has that happy, bittersweet reaction, man, what a tear-jerker! It's like you can FEEL his sense of relief that it's finally over...the waiting, the hoping, the regret, all of it. That he's finally made peace with his egregious errors of his past. I think it was done beautifully!


Uh huh...again, I must admit, you're right about that. The cartoon does handle that in more detail, and through more of the cartoon than the movie gives it. And they perhaps should have given more time and effort to it, and even shown the animals' reactions and dismay more. Very well said.

I guess, in a way, this is why I felt this movie augments and serves as a companion to the book and the old cartoon in a way that the Grinch and Cat in the Hat live-action movies did not with their older counterparts. Because it really doesn't take very much at all away from the old stories, or do disservice to them overall (beyond the one review quote I mentioned, and using a 25 year-old to portray a 12 year-old). Yes, they could have done more with the things you mentioned, it is true. But at least they didn't botch it nearly as much as the other two movies I just mentioned, huh?

Thanks for contributing that!

My doodle of the Lorax.

That's stunning, Mighty! What a wonderful job! And the eyes - it's like I'm looking at the Lorax himself!

Thank you!

And there's Pipsqueak, with a mouthful of marshmallows! ROFL

GAH! Mighty! You're all KINDS of epic lately!

Mighty is my name, epic is my game.

Excuse my double post, but guess what Mighty bought at Target today XD

Anyway, great movie! I loved the bed scene.

To coin a phrase: "Yay!" (thank you, Pip )

Is it not worth it? Is it not?

^ Worth every penny.