dir. Chris Renaud
The whole point of Dr Seuss’ stories was to use simple imagery and engaging language to tell a profound moral. Sadly, this adaptation of The Lorax instead uses garbage imagery and garbage language to tell a garbage moral. The songs are loud and basic and annoying; the characters are loud and basic and annoying; the animation is loud and basic and annoying. From the painfully obvious Minions rip-offs to the tired hipster references and clichés, there’s nothing remotely resembling subtlety in this. The original talks about how there’s no real easy answer to saving the planet, and how much of the balance between industrialism and environmentalism is a grey area. However, in this there’s just a simple portrayal of good vs evil, no room for nuance or ambiguity – and thus no room for the audience themselves to remotely consider that they could, however inadvertently, be contributing to the problem. The original tale is about not succumbing to consumerism, yet this version of The Lorax is, arguably, consumerism defined.
BMDb 