MoeJackson

Those darn culture wars continue, it seems - Maryland became the eighth state to legalize gay marriage, the Virginia legislature still wants women to undergo forced ultrasounds when they have abortions (is that Rick Santorum cheering the background?), and George Clooney doesn’t mind it when people insist he’s homosexual, though Tom Cruise still does. And that’s just in the last 24 hours!

Kids movies, it seems, are no exception, since this week’s biggest release, The Lorax, makes a not so subtle push to uphold the environmentalist agenda. Yes, it’s based on a Dr. Seuss book now decades old, but that hasn’t halted Lou Dobbs and Co. (perhaps the ghost of Andrew Breitbart as well?) from outrage over the fact that the movie teaches kids to (gasp!) care about their planet, think of trees as living things, and to generally live a less selfish life. I know: how could they?!?

None of this, thankfully, will matter to the kids in the audience watching the movie. To them, it will be plain that the story is about a boy who discovers a whimsical creature in a forest who has done great damage to his home for his own benefit: in a nutshell, the Lorax (voiced by Danny DeVito) implores the Once-ler (Ed Helms) to stop cutting down trees to make a garment called the Thneed. He doesn’t listen, of course, which means a lesson is to be learned by the end of the movie. Not so controversial, if you ask me.

The movie goes beyond the original fable by adding a villain named O’hare whose crime is that he bottles fresh air and then sells it to the gasping minions of the forest. He gets rich doing it (oh, see, there’s that fiendish anti-capitalist liberal agenda! How dare they imply it’s wrong to rape the earth for monetary gain!) which compels him to stop the story’s hero since he wants to save the trees which would threaten O’hare’s ability to co-opt oxygen. It’s all so simple, really.

The movie is enjoyable enough, though certainly not “great”, in the tradition of Dr. Seuss. The animation is astounding at times, but then every so often you’re reminded that this is a Dr. Seuss fable and the 3D format that Hollywood foists upon every animated feature nowadays is more a distraction than an asset. A classic case of less is more.

And that’s kind of the whole point of the story, now isn’t it?