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| Released: |
2012 |
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| Genre: |
ANIMATION
FAMILY
COMEDY
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| Origin: |
US |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
94 |
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Fun for kids, less so for adults. |
Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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Dr Seuss’s 1971 cautionary tale about the environment finally reaches the big screen. Well, kind of.
Readers of the original book will notice that its content is stuffed into three flashbacks, while most of the running-time is devoted to a new framing device, a rather depressing attempt to ingratiate itself with the assumed tastes of 21st century American children.
The hero of the film is teenager Ted (voiced by Zac Efron) who lives in Thneedville, a plastic city where even the trees are synthetic. Ted doesn’t have an ounce of ecological awareness in him, but the girl he wants to impress, called Audrey (voiced by Taylor Swift and looking like her), has this thing about real trees, whatever they are. She says she’ll kiss any boy who brings her one.
Instead of asking her why she can’t be bothered to go out searching for a tree herself, Ted gets on his trusty motor-scooter and rides outside the town, where he meets a reclusive, erstwhile capitalist called the Once-ler (Ed Helms). Unlike most industrialists who scarper once they’ve wrecked the environment, this one chooses to live amongst the blasted wasteland created by his own pollution. I’m not sure why, and the movie can’t be bothered to tell us.
The Once-ler tells Ted the story of his life, punctuated by terrible, unmemorable songs, and tells him about the Lorax (pictured centre), a lurid orange creature with a hectoring manner who used to talk “for” the trees.
Voiced by Danny De Vito, he’s a charmless eco-freak who doesn’t do much except play a practical joke with near-fatal results. In the original Seuss story, he was the moral centre. In the film, he’s a tedious pain, like a spray-tanned Al Gore.
While we’re on the subject of pains, there’s a second capitalist villain created for the movie. He’s called O’Hare (Rob Riggle). His aim is to stop Ted getting that tree for Audrey, as O’Hare manufactures bottled air and can’t stand anything that doesn’t make him a profit.
As an attack on western capitalism, this is crude stuff, and the film has nowhere near the wit of co-director Chris Renaud’s previous film, Despicable Me.
The whole film posits a polarity that is fake. It tells children the only choice is between industrial progress and nature. You can’t have both.
I’m still waiting for the children’s film that points out how much capitalism has helped the environment, increased life expectancy and vastly increased our quality of life, but I’m not holding my breath.
The Lorax itself is, of course, a product of capitalism. First the book and now the film have depended on numerous legal, supportive elements of our economic system to reach the general public and earn money.
The people behind The Lorax must know this, so don’t they realise how shamelessly hypocritical they are? The film has at least 70 promotional sponsors, including one firm, that is trying to use The Lorax to promote a brand-new SUV.
The picture does indeed capture some of the worst aspects of capitalism, but not in the way it intends. The film-makers’ approach to Dr Seuss’s 1971 cautionary tale about the environment is to sacrifice its simplicity, elegance and charm. Who needs those old things, right?
No, the way to cash in on the Lorax brand-name is to make it bigger, flashier and pad it out with politically correct hectoring and redundant characters that might be merchandisable in toy shops.
The result is a film that’s fatally lacking in humanity, and looks as flashy, plastic and commercialised as the world Dr Seuss condemned. This is unlikely to worry small children, but may strike thinking grown-ups as ironic.
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