DVD: Horton Hears a Who!

By: Eli Turner Posted: January 11, 2009

AKA, Horton Discerns a From Whence!

If a computer-animated film isn't from Pixar, then it's really just filling the gaps between Pixar movies. Some scabs taste better than others, however, and this is one of them. Now that you're grossed out by the memory of that gross scab-eating kid from elementary school, I'd like to get on with the review now.

Remember when you were trying your best to ignore that disgusting kid when your were seven? Well, if you're from earth, and therefore any child besides that weird kid, then you were likely ignoring him by blocking him from your view with the excessively large hard cover of a Dr. Seuss book (geez, I sound like I was traumatized by that ki or something). I think I only read the prequel to Horton Hears a Who!, Horton Hatches an Egg. Apparently the first book was before Theodore Geisel (the good Doctor himself) discovered his infatuation with the exclamation point (Horton Hears a Who!, How The Grinch Stole Christmas!, There's a Wocket in My Pocket!, and some more are all supposed to be shouted, apparently).

Horton actually does quite well to capture the feel of Dr. Seuss. The animations is colorful, the characters are unique and fun, and the plot is actually not terrificaly embellished by the film. The outline is pretty much the same down to the climax of the plot, but of course some drama was fleshed out to extend the film to ninety minutes. Some of the dialogue was taken directly from the book, but you could tell what was Seuss and what was not.

The animation is fairly well-done, not that there's much room to impress with such a cartoony source material, but the most impressive aspect of the animation was definitely the water effects. This film had some of the best water effects I've seen in a computer animated film. Another wonderful bit about this film was the pair of cut scenes animated cel-style in Seuss -style drawings. Those stood out to me as creative and original.

Jim Carrey and Steve Carrell do okay in their voice acting parts, and they fit their characters quite well. Well, Carrey's voice could have been a bit deeper since he was playing an elephant, but his inflection and tone worked well for the character. Carrell was spot-on. However, the most impressive performance to me was Seth Rogan. He played Horton's mouse friend Morton. He had about two minutes of screen time in the whole film, but the animators did such a good job animating his characters to his voice that it was exceedingly perfect. I was quite impressed with that bit, probably more so than any other aspect of the film.

All in all, Horton is an enjoyable enough animated film, definitely worth watching if you have fond memories of Dr. Seuss or if you have small children, or if you're like me and you just need a cinematic methadone fix until Up, Pixar's next dose of digital heroin, shoots itself up onto the big screen next year. Now I have to go; I have some scabs that need picking.

Special Features:

Disc One:

• Directors' Audio Commentary w/ Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino
• Ice Age short "Surviving Sid"

Disc Two:

• Deleted Footage and Animation Screen Tests
• That’s One Big Elephant: Animating Horton
• Bringing the Characters to Life
• Meet Katie
• Elephant Fun: The Facts
• Our Speck: Where Do We Fit In?
• A Person Is a Person: A Universal Message
• Bringing Seuss to Screen
• The Elephant in the Room: Jim Carrey
• We Are Here! Game