Film

Cosmology, apocalypse, McCarthyism: All found their way into Theodor Geisel’s 1954 kiddie classic about a friendly elephant who picks up tiny voices emanating from the tip of a purple puff. These shouts belong to the dazzlingly urbane residents of Who-ville, a group that also must come to a quick appreciation of the big picture before it’s too late. Pardon me—it’s been years—but I’d forgotten about the quotes from Apocalypse Now (“I love the smell of bananas in the morning,” squeals Horton), the soliciting of friends on WhoSpace or the book’s climactic REO Speedwagon sing-along ending.

Yes, Horton Hears a Who! has been dragged into the modern age, nowhere near as hyperactively as the Shrek movies, but not without damage. (As if Dr. Seuss didn’t have enough hip-hop in his verse to begin with.) Still, here is a film in which computer animation, drawing attention to every wondrous drop of dew, makes total sense. And the talent pool is well used, not just Jim Carrey at the opposite end of his Truman Show microscope, but Carol Burnett as a bossy, rationalist kangaroo and Isla Fisher as an adorable Who mad scientist. Enough of the book’s egalitarian spirit survives, no matter how small or Happy Meal–ified.