Horton hears a Who

Horton hears a Who (2008) starring the voices of Jim Carrey, Steve Carell, Carol Burnett, Will Arnett, Seth Rogen, Isla Fisher, and Jonah Hill.

Before...I love, absolutely love, Dr Seuss. He is one of my favourite childhood authors. So to hear that they were planning to do a film of Horton hears a Who excited me a lot. However the real fear for me was the mess that they had made with Cat in the Hat, the most recent adaptation. They had utterly massacred it. On the bright side Jim Carrey had made magnificent work of the adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

One day, Horton the elephant (Carrey) hears a cry from help coming from a speck of dust. Even though he can't see anyone on the speck, he decides to help it. As it turns out, the speck of dust is home to the Mayor of Whoville (Carrell) and the Whos, who live in their city of Whoville. Horton agrees to help protect the Whos and their home, but this gives him nothing but torment from his neighbors, who refuse to believe that anything could survive on the speck. Still, Horton stands by the motto that, "After all, a person is a person, no matter how small."

So where to start....as always I think starting with the faults is the best thing to do. Gets them out of the way, so we can focus on the good things. The main issue I had with the movie...well the only issue was the out of place 2D dream sequences that absolutely positively did not fit in at all with the Seussian look of the film. It was as if Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino thought "What can we do to give this film an non-Seussian feel?" And then they went and did it. However maybe they did it to fill out the time in the movie, as there is not much depth in plot to pad it out. Not to say that it isn't a done well though.

One of the many great things about this film is the voice acting. All of the voices are perfectly suited to each of the characters. We are also presented with two actors, Carrey and Carrell, whos chemistry on-screen is perfect. They both play off each other fantastically. It is not only them that are great in the movie, the other characters are wonderful too. It seems that each actor was hand-picked for their role, because I couldn't see any other actors voicing them.

Not onl that but the CGI in the film is simply stunning. It is done by the same people who created Ice Age, and it shows, it is simply wonderful. Not just because it is good CGI but also the fact that they have captured the world of Dr Seuss perfectly. They have got the colours spot on and the whole feel of the film is wonderfully Seussian.

That I think is the key to this film. The fact that even though they have placed within the film a section of utterly non-Seussian imagery, the core of the film is Seussian, from the choice of the actors, to the colours used, from the way the characters move, to the use of the odd Seussian language. It is all of this that means that I want to give this film...

★★★★☆