Dr Seuss’ The Lorax

The late Theodor Seuss Giesel, better known to children everywhere as Dr Seuss, has had a particularly hard time at the cruel hands of Hollywood. Consecutive abominations How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Cat in the Hat led to his aghast widow decreeing that there should never be another live-action Seuss movie. The CGI animated version of Horton Hears a Who? from the people behind the Ice Age flicks was no masterpiece, but it did at least make an effort to retain some of the author’s witty wordplay and surreal, primary-coloured whimsy. More importantly, the film was a big commercial hit. So it was inevitable that Tinseltown would return to plunder those precious Seuss resources again. So back in 2012, they alighted upon his ahead-of-its-time, pro-environment, anti-consumerist parable from 1972.

The main problem faced by film-makers is that the Seuss books are masterpieces of economy, with few words and even fewer drawings. Clearly, the temptation is to pad out these slight stories with lowest-common-denominator guff from other successful recent animations. So this time we get a new villain straight out of the creators’ previous film Despicable Me, an expanded role for the boy hero, needless movie in-jokes (Mission: Impossible, etc), lots of forgettable songs and endless frantic 3D action. While it’s hard not to warm to a children’s film that’s been accused of indoctrination and dubbed “insidious nonsense” by a red-faced pundit on conservative Fox News, the tree-hugging moral is delivered with all the subtlety of the axe swung at our hapless arboreal chums by their evil capitalist exploiter.

Ted (voiced by Zac Efron), a 12-year-old boy living in the wholly artificial city of Thneedville, resolves to track down a real tree for lovely hippy-tweenie Audrey (Taylor Swift). His granny (Betty White, the nonagenarian go-to gal for movie grandma figures) confides that a mysterious, reclusive figure named the Once-ler (Ed Helms) holds the key to this quest. Sneaking out into the wasteland beyond the city walls, Ted tracks down the Once-ler to a fortified lair and solicits his tale of woe. As a young man, the Once-ler discovered that abundant candyfloss Truffula trees could be used to make thneeds – useless products that everyone desired. The forest’s grumpy, luxuriantly moustachioed mystical protector, the Lorax (Danny DeVito), attempted to intervene. But such was the Once-ler’s lust for economic growth at any cost (“I intend to keep on biggering and biggering and nothing is going to stop me!”) that industrial logging continued until the last Truffula tree was felled and all the forest’s singing fish and acrobatic bears departed. There remains just a glimmer of hope.

Not much Seuss text remains, but the casting of DeVito as the voice of the diminutive, grouchy Lorax is inspired. The film also gets plenty of fun out of the greedy mayor of Thneedville – absent from the book – who makes a fortune selling bottled air to its citizens. (“Our research shows that when you put something in a plastic bottle, people will buy it,” an oily PR man informs him.) That said, Pixar’s classic WALL•E carried a similar message with much more grace than this over-cluttered and ultimately rather formulaic animation. Connoisseurs of hypocrisy may wish to note that in the US the film was marketed with more than 70 “product integration deals”, including disposable nappies and a gas-guzzling SUV.

Deckchair seating will be provided on a first come first served basis for Big Screen Bristol’s free outdoor screening in Millennium Square. Go here for more information.