By some way, the best screen adaptation of a Dr Seuss book is the 1966 TV film of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, animated by the great Chuck Jones (himself the creator of some of the most unforgettable cartoon characters), impeccably and inimitably narrated by Boris Karloff and lasting a beautifully crisp 26 minutes. Most of the other versions of his wonderful verse fables – including the Jim Carrey live-action treatment of The Grinch, the live-action The Cat in the Hat and the animated Horton Hears a Who! – are wildly overlong and sentimentalised.
The same, I'm afraid, is the case with the 3D-CGI The Lorax, in which the fashionably named Ted Wiggins of Thneedville goes in search of a real tree to impress his high school girlfriend. Thneedville is a synthetic community with fake vegetation, run by the corrupt capitalist O'Hare, who grows rich by selling bottled air to the easily swayed inhabitants. With the help of his granny, Ted goes into the outside world to get advise from the wise conservationist, the Lorax. It's a didactic piece with too much prose, too many chases and not enough wit. Small children will probably like it, but they deserve better.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jul/29/dr-seuss-the-lorax-review
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