Bweinh! Goes to the Movies: Horton Hears a Who

March 31, 2008, 9:58 pm; posted by
Filed under Articles, Djere, Featured, Movies  | 2 Comments

Jim Carrey in the feel-good picture of the year, this ain’t. But if you’re looking to be diverted from your troubles with a non-canonical Seuss-ish movie, drop the nine bucks on a ticket and kick back.

The movie follows the hapless Horton (Carrey)Horton Hearing a Who, an elephant who teaches the strangely shaped children of the Jungle of Nool (including the terrifyingly bizarre “Katie,” a multi-colored, sheep-like creature who can float). Horton discovers a speck of dust, on which lies the city of Whoville. They’re not the Whos of Grinch-related fame, but Whos they are nonetheless.

The mayor of Whoville (ably portrayed by Steve Carrell) requests Horton’s help in saving his Whovilization from almost certain doom, but Horton is met with resistance from the stifling censorship and closemindedness of Kangaroo (Carol Burnett).

The two most famous Seuss lines in the movie are: “I meant what I said and I said what I meant; an elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent,” and “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” For the record, the first line doesn’t even appear in the original Horton Hears a Who, but rather in Horton Hatches an Egg. What’s that? Who cares about which book it was in? That’s right. I care. Me, the guy who wrote a 30-page paper on Dr. Seuss for his 20th Century American Literature class!

It’s still true, though. A person’s a person no matter how small, whether 4 or 40, a blasted liberal or a blastocyte. Except for emo kids. Yuck. They turned the “shirker named Jo-Jo,” who taught in the book that “every little bit helps” and “everyone needs to work together to be productive,” into the mayor’s whiny emo son.

I call it Seuss-ish because the good Doctor’s books are just so short, it’s difficult to make a feature-length flick out of them without a good deal of fluff, so know what you’re getting into: an 88-minute diversion with several laugh-out-loud jokes, but no real staying power.

I give it a “Bwei” out of “Bweinh!” (4 out of 7).


Comments

2 Comments to “Bweinh! Goes to the Movies: Horton Hears a Who”

  1. Steve on March 31st, 2008 11:07 pm

    I decree this proprietary rating system shall be an integral part of all future movie reviews! I’ll even go back and add it to mine.

  2. Dsweetgoober on April 2nd, 2008 5:18 pm

    This new rating system will cause all kinds of trouble for triviia fans 500 years from now with some asserting that this article gave birth to the term “B” movie when referring to a bad film.

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