What distinguishes Horton Hears a Who! from the other recent Dr Seuss film adaptations - How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Cat in the Hat, in case you need reminding - is that it is not one of the worst movies ever made. That's faint praise, I know, and I'm even willing to go a bit further. There are aspects of Horton, directed by Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino under the auspices of the 20th Century Fox animation unit responsible for the Ice Age movies, that are fresh and enjoyable, and bits that will gratify even a dogmatic and orthodox Seussian.
Unlike The Grinch and The Cat, Horton does not try to flesh out the good doctor's graphical world by means of sets, prosthetic makeup and the other accouterments of live-action moviemaking. The animation is free, supple and brightly colored, and the crazy curves and angles that Seuss arranged on the page pop into three dimensions with rubbery energy and elastic wit. Who-ville in particular - that speck-borne town with its spindly machinery and gravity-defying architecture - is a wondrously kinetic place. And the Jungle of Nool, where Horton passes his time and fights for survival of the Whos, is appropriately lush, inviting and strange.
But if Horton Hears a Who! offers a showcase of the visual inventiveness and technical flair that characterizes Hollywood-financed children's animation these days, it also shows some of the limitations of the computer-animation, talking-animal genre. The filmmakers revel in the imaginative freedom their image-making technology affords, and use it with self-confidence and flair, especially in action sequences. (A chase through a field of bright pink clover is lovely and thrilling.)
PHOTO: COURTESY OF FOX
When it comes to telling the story, however, and drawing out the dimensions of the characters, this Horton supplements Dr Seuss's fable with pages from the battered, worn-out Hollywood family-film playbook.
GOING THROUGH THE MOTIONS
All kinds of extraneous elements are added to the story. The Mayor of Who-ville, voiced by Steve Carell, is a beleaguered dad who has trouble communicating with his son, a moody emo boy named Jo-Jo. The problem with this father-son reconciliation narrative is not that it is un-Seussian - though such intergenerational melodrama almost never figured in Dr Seuss' work - but that it's tired and sentimental. You don't get the sense that the writers (Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul) actually believe in it. It just feels like something they know they're supposed to do.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF FOX
The excitable sidekick is another such requirement, and here that duty is taken on by Seth Rogen in the role of Morton, a motor-mouthed mouse who is Horton's best friend. Rogen's casting, like Carell's, is less a stunt than a kind of pop-culture insurance clause. Get some box-office-proven comedians to do the voice work - Jonah Hill, Isla Fisher and Dan Fogler make up part of the B team here, in smaller parts - and you can't fail.
And Horton Hears a Who! probably won't, at least as a commercial proposition. But the star whose presence is clearly meant to be its gold-plated guarantee of success - Jim Carrey as Horton - is also the source of its most egregious failure. Carrey, who also played the Grinch, can be an agile and restrained actor when the mood strikes him. But the steadfast elephant is a vehicle for an endless, grating avalanche of clowning and riffing. Carrey not only breaks character with his goofing, he also all but destroys the nobility and sweetness that make Horton such a durable hero of children's literature.
Horton is loyal, stubborn and compassionate - traits that are all drowned out in the static of Carrey's performance and the hectic proliferation of subplots. It is lucky that just enough of the basic story survives to give the movie a touch of gravity and suspense. Horton, hearing the voices of the Whos on their little speck, must protect them from a moralizing kangaroo (Carol Burnett) and her henchfolk, who include a Russian vulture (Will Arnett) and a band of aristocratically named apes.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF FOX
Meanwhile, the citizens of Who-ville must band together to make their presence known in the larger universe. It's a marvelous tale, and a hard one to ruin. And the makers of Horton Hears a Who! haven't, though I fear it was not for lack of trying.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless