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Dr Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! U
SCREENINGS
Dr Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! is about an imaginative elephant who hears a cry for help coming from a tiny speck of dust floating through the air. Suspecting there may be life on that speck and despite a surrounding community which thinks he has lost his marbles, Horton is determined to help. "When Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr Seuss, first published his children's book Horton Hears A Who! back in 1954, it was widely regarded as an allegorical critique of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the closed ideology of his House of Un-American Activities Committee. Years afterwards, America's anti-abortion lobby would appropriate Horton's famous catch-phrase "A person's a person, no matter how small" to their own cause, leading an irate Seuss to threaten legal action, and his widow Audrey to actually file suit. All of which is to say that in spite (or perhaps because) of its sublime simplicity, Seuss' book lends itself flexibly to all manner of interpretations - something which writers Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul have taken fully on board for their big-screen adaptation. ...What makes this story of scale appeal so universally to children, apart from the bright colours, bizarre characters and gleefully absurd turns of phrase, is its concern with folk who are small, overlooked and easily ignored, and with authorities who can occasionally act with arbitrariness, irrationality and unfairness. Any kid will appreciate what dealing with that can be like. Best of all, the film promotes the values of perseverance, fidelity and a respect for others, while encouraging the wildest of imaginative leaps in young ones. And it does all this while staying true to the spirit, if not always the letter, of Seuss' original. Beautifully realised, entertainingly absurd and as true to the original as a feature-length expansion can be, this animated allegory gets the child in all of us to think big thoughts about small things. "
UK RELEASE 21 March 2008
DIRECTOR Jimmy Hayward, Steve Martino
CAST (voices) Jim Carrey, Steve Carell, Carol Burnett
RUNNING TIME 88 minutes
COUNTRY USA official film website
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