I don’t believe anybody at my middle school will see this movie, and I understand why. This movie is made for little children, hence the G rating. It was the first 20th Century Fox film that I didn’t appreciate very much, although it still has enough humor and good actors for a three star rating.

Horton (Jim Carrey) is a carefree elephant who loves hanging out with his friend, Morton the mouse (Seth Rogen). He is having an ordinary day when suddenly, he thinks he hears a voice coming from a speck of dust. He dismisses it, only to find out that on the speck lives the town of (you guessed it); Whoville, led by its Mayor O’Malley (Steve Carell) who is as good as butter on popcorn at being a mayor but a bad father to his only son. By the way, he has 96 daughters.

Unfortunately, when Horton shows the speck to the Mother Kangaroo (Carol Burnett playing Mommy Dearest), she tells him to get rid of it. Horton, however, does not heed her orders and decides to keep Whoville with him.

The Mayor knows something has changed about Whoville, but he doesn’t know what. When he tries to tell the city council this, they don’t believe him. The Mayor manages to make contact with Horton and the two become friends. When he finds out that too much movement of the town on the speck will break it, he asks Horton to take the town back where it was before it blew into his hands. Horton agrees to do the deed, unaware that the Kangaroo has hired a hit-eagle named Vlad (Will Arnett) to track him down and destroy the speck.

Jim Carrey is not the kind of actor you can put in a G-rated movie. He is limited here because of the rating and can’t do his usual improvised teenage-adult potty humor. If you see him in “The Mask” and then see him in this, you wonder why a guy like him would be in a movie like this. He can express himself freely if he is actually doing what’s on the screen and if the film has a PG through R rating.

This film had many physical comedic moments in it, like when a stapler hits the Mayor in the head or when Horton tries to think he’s as light as a feather while crossing a rickety bridge. Though it got high ratings, “Horton Hears a Who” is not a teenage-aimed movie and for the first time, my mom fell asleep, right when the citizens of Whoville were chanting “We are here, we are here, we are here!”

I think I too am getting too old for this kind of movie.

The people who made this film added in many things that were necessary to make a short story last longer than 15 minutes. One of them being the Mayor and his wife having 96 girls and only one boy, Jojo, and discussing the Mayor’s relationship with his children.

My sister’s friend, Morganne, ended up taking her entire birthday party of 8 through 11 year olds to the movie. I took a poll afterwards and found that many of the party-goers gave it high ratings. One boy, Ben, however, gave it one of the lowest ratings in the universe, a 1.5. I suggest this movie for ages 4 to 11.

Rated G for “Good Job, Geisel.”

***

login to post comments