Movie review: Coolness in the land of 'The Lorax'

What do you get when you go beyond the cotton-candy walls of childhood? Why, cotton-candy trees, of course!

 

Or at least they looked like cotton candy, those wispy hairs coiled around the tops of ramrod straight tree trunks resembling fur more than pine needles and broad leafy shapes that are more familiar to us. The colorful tufts are the raw materials for thneeds, which should rhyme with threads but doesn’t, in the same way that cotton doesn’t grow on trees. But then again, nothing much is expected to make sense in a children’s story anyway.

 

Fortunately for us grown-ups, and the children in tow, the makers of Dr. Seuss’ "The Lorax" have taken pains to transform the story of a well-loved character into a plot that reflects contemporary realities while still imparting those much-needed moral lessons. What’s more, the combination of cute elements with just enough edgy and hip references makes for a thoroughly entertaining experience for film audiences stretching from the baby boomers to the millennials.

 

The movie revolves around the quest of a boy named Ted, whose too-cool-for-school air will certainly resonate among young lads as well as guys who refuse to grow up, to find a tree. Yeah, yeah, blame it on the obligatory romantic angle. But, hey, no story is complete without some love in it, so let’s just go with the flow, okay?

 

Right, so he takes his motorbike to the outskirts of town – shades of The Truman Show here – and discovers a gray landscape far removed from the antiseptic and rainbow-colored artificiality of his childhood. There, he meets a hermit called The Once-ler and listens to the tale about a curious creature named the Lorax, who emerges from his celestial home to become the indignant voice of protest for the silently elegant trees amid nature’s other creatures – singing and dancing fishes, birds, and bears, among other wonderful characters.

 

Trees? Nature? Um, what is this thing you call trees? And why did the Once-ler cut down all the trees in the forest? Well, those are questions that will be answered when you watch the unfolding tragedy of The Once-ler and how he manages to redeem himself in the end, as expected, with the spunky volunteer Ted.

 

During the movie premiere last Sunday, we overheard the kids in the audience asking the accompanying adults about things like lying and keeping promises, universal sins and values that everyone is expected to learn in kindergarten. But there are lessons here for the grown-ups as well, especially when The Once-ler sings:

 

How bad, how bad, how bad can I be

I’m just building the economy...

 

The perfect timing of strains from the James Bond theme in one musical sequence also had the adults laughing, probably to the wonderment of the kids. Indeed, the film would make a great inter-generational topic over family dinner.  

Although it’s a variation of an oft-repeated theme, i.e. the destruction of the environment and corporate greed, "The Lorax" is a welcome addition to the – okay, we shall dare to say it – pantheon of educational movies we are likely to keep in our home theater racks. It doesn’t have the sentimentality of Wall-E, the hard sell tone of Fern Gully, and the philosophical mumbo-jumbo of Avatar. There’s just fast-paced narrative and, as in the scene where his faithful donkey deserts The Once-ler in his great moment of need, lots of humor amid the sadness.

 

Inevitably there’s a villain, represented here by the short and rotund O’Hare, he with the impeccably trimmed eyebrows and pageboy hairstyle. The bottled air he is selling seems like a parody of life’s necessities in a polluted urban future, but as savvy investors know, it’s now a reality in climate deals where tons of carbon – hot air, basically – are getting traded in the world market for huge sums of money. In a world fixated with the next big thing and game-changing ideas, there’s a lesson here for the men and women in suits who talk about complex sums and gigatons of gases as if they were the most important things in life. Strangely, even though he's supposed to be the lead, the Lorax isn't quite as grumpy as he is described in most of the advance promotion for the film. It's a character that suffers from lack of development, seeming more like a mascot than the central role in the movie. Playing cards and eating marshmallows may seem fun, but the nonchalance and the loser image somehow veers away from the film's message.

 

Obviously, growing trees is not THE answer to global environmental problems, but it’s a start. Yes, trees can be icky when sap runs down the trunk and the creepy crawlers in the branches get on your skin. They grow in filthy soil and the leaves falling down our yards can be a hassle, as O’Hare points out. But as the protagonists argue in the final song, trees also give us fresh air that we often take for granted.

 

At the premiere showing, packets of zinnia seeds were glued to the tickets, the better for the kids to apply the lessons they learned as soon as they get home. Hopefully, the candy-colored flowers they will yield in the future would, indeed, encourage future generations to let the trees grow. – VS, GMA News

 

Dr. Seuss’ "The Lorax" opens March 14 in cinemas. All photos courtesy of Solar Entertainment Corporation.