Review of The Lorax (2012) by Godotisw8Ing4U — 30 Jan 2013

As a movie considered strictly on its own merits, The Lorax is passable but unmemorable, except for its catchy music. The movie maintains a mostly very Seussian art style, much to its credit, which offers a better sense for the whimsy of the thing.

As an adaptation, however, The Lorax is almost insulting, misinterpreting the original work's moral of "overconsumption is bad and destroys the environment, which is also in itself bad" into "trees are awesome and corporations are evil".

One of the most important elements of any adaptation is the feel of the adaptation versus the feel of the original, and when your adaptation doesn't play fast and loose with the source material there's a need to adhere very closely with your feel, but this movie doesn't even try to succeed at that.

It's a very cynical movie, with a cynical sense of humor that is admittedly quite funny when considered on its own merits, but feels mean in context, and with an almost sarcastically naive moral, and yet I feel like all of this was done as a means of playing it safe on the studio's part, which is ironic when you think about it because cynical approaches to childhood classics seem like they would be the opposite of safe.

The movie feels like an underachieving teenager, deliberately withholding effort because it's easier to excuse a flop as "I wasn't trying anyway" than to face the possibility that someone might not like your best work.

The movie's crippling fear of rejection causes it to lose the earnestness that could have served it so well as a Dr. Seuss adaptation, instead choosing to constantly act like it's too cool for itself.

It's a rare thing when all of a movie's flaws proceed so cleanly from a single source, but this really is the wellspring that it all pours from: the Lorax was too afraid you wouldn't like it if it gave 100%, so it decided to only give something like 70%.

If you want to see some great art design and hear some fun songs, by all means rent/borrow it, but if you actually want to get the story, read the book or watch the old half-hour cartoon special.