Dr. Seuss's The Lorax is Awesome!

Happy Belated Birthday, Dr. Seuss!!! The Lorax is a fantastic thought provoking gem brought to you by the same amazing team that produced Hop and Despicable Me.  We (the audience) are welcomed to the city of Thneedville. A city without any natural fauna and a declining amount of a breathable atmosphere, where the O’Hare Corporation is based on over industrialization to mass produce clean synthetic air packaged in plastic bottles through a musical with an animated dance number.

Audrey (voiced by Taylor Swift) a young vibrant redhead with an affinity for trees, dreams of the day that she will be able to see a real tree while Ted (voiced by Zac Efron) is as reckless as he is brave, courageous, and encourage able. Ted just wants the girl at any cause. After Audrey proposes that she will marry the person on the spot if he can fulfill her dreams of seeing a real tree. Ted is immediately enthralled by the idea, and he obsesses on finding any information that will lead him in finding the source of his heart’s desire; a living tree for his one and only crush, and the adventure begins.

Ted’s Grammy Norma (voiced by Betty White) fills Ted’s head about the Once-ler (the person of interest), a person who may know something about living trees (the need), and so Ted races out of his house after breakfast on his motorized monocycle to meet the man known as the Once-ler (voiced by Ed Helms), leaving the confines of the smog ridden Thneedville. Riding through the dark wasteland riddled with broken machines baring their sharpened blades and fields with tree stumps, Ted arrives to an unkempt house with several stories and weeds decorating the yard.

Ted meets the Once-ler and he gives him the tragic exposition as to what transpired to the trees and how Thneedville was created as well as how the Lorax (voiced by Danny DeVito) showed him the errors of his ways.

The engrossing theme of the environmental message of pollution, deforestation, and careless human behavior creates a brilliant relatable discourse packaged in an animation (Family Movie Genre).  There are other themes of the capitalist economic model, corporate greed, the absolute power of corruption and how it corrupts absolutely. The corruption and dangers of a monopoly, especially of its unreasonable control along with the price of inflation while creating a pseudo supply and demand ethic by limiting production while the production of the item harms the environment giving rise to more demand of the product in question. Mr. O’Hare’s (voiced by Rob Riggle) synthetic air company, for example, or today’s topical discursive analysis of the water and power companies, but more in line with gas and its inflated prices.

The performances where all very well voiced and the animation as well as the artwork is amazing the overall grade that give this movie is a B+, but the message of the environment and the dire action that we as residence on this planet must take action if we want to see the organisms on this planet thrive earns this film an A+ grade. Yes, I agree that we must do our part whether if it replanting seeds, recycling, or re-using items. The message hits home. Although the 3D in the film waasn't all that cracked up to be, so if you see it in 2D you are not missing much, but please give this feature a chance. How did you feel about this movie? Did the animated feature spark any time of sentiment or thought?

The Secret World of Arrietty gets Glorified!

Shawn (voiced by David Henrie) is a young man waiting for a new heart, he is sent to his grandfather’s house under the care of his aunt and her housekeeper Hara (voiced by Carol Burnett), and while he is dealing with the anxiety of his mortality, his parents are facing a divorce, so his mother sends him away so that he can rest while she is away on business (are the tears welling up, yet?). Arriving at his new destined location, Shawn catches a glimpse of a young Borrower frolicking in the vast landscape that is yard, but because of Arrietty’s size, is her world.  Arrietty (voiced by Bridgit Mendler) has become of age to fulfill her initiation of the next level of her life.

She is ready to become a borrower, and the first step in her rite of passage is to borrow some sugar and a tissue. On her first night of her scavenging adventure, Arrietty is accompanied by her father Pod (voiced by Will Arnett).  Pod leads Arrietty through a myriad of labyrinths from the foundation of the house to the kitchen. During the Borrower’s excursion up to Shawn’s bedroom for the tissue, Shawn is wide-eyed and spots Arrietty as she and her father work the tissue from out of the box.

Freezing in shock, Arrietty drops the sugar as she and her father calmly creep back towards their esoteric passages and arrive back home somewhat empty handed. The discovery forces Pod to convince his family of relocation because no one must know that they exist. Hara (the antagonist) discovers the Borrowers’ whereabouts under the house and she manages to capture Arrietty’s mother, Homily (voiced by Amy Poehler). Hara places Homily in a jar, and calls an exterminator to get rid of the thieving pests. Shawn and Arrietty rescue Homily, and he assists them to escape to find Spiller. I feel that I have said too much already, but I have relinquished the details to a minimum. This film should be experienced in the theater. Disney’s greatest business move was the purchase of Studio Ghibli. I give the narrative an A- and the art as well as the art direction an A++. This film is an instant family classic.

Studio Ghibli does it again! In a modern industry filled with the technological, MoCap (motion capture), CGI (computer graphics imaging), and etc…it is really refreshing to take a step back and take in the wonderful craft of hand drawn animation cells. The artistic rendering of the gauche painted backgrounds are simply fantastic and brilliant. The vivid colors and vast landscapes give rise to a visual illusion of depth of field and perspective. The bright colors enrich and further the wonderful experience that is The Secret World of Arrietty.  This epic narrative of fantasy does a great job to manipulate its audience into a myriad of shots where the artist plays with the scale of certain sequences, for example, the scene where Arrietty (voiced by Bridgit Mendler) is being attacked by the crow, and the crow’s size even matches the scale of Shawn (voiced by David Henrie), and yes, I agree that the scene is important as it pertains to the dangers of the real world, but the exaggeration of size adds to the fantasy.

The narrative follows a linear pattern with light expositions, but the structure is not a predictable formulaic three act journey. This animation is a well thought-out product and not some typical popcorn family roundup, and with that being said, one can enjoy the three dimensional dynamic characters with their distinguishable quirks and mannerisms.

The sound design plays an integral function as well as to show the audience that the protagonists are larger than their actual height. For example, during the sequence when Arrietty’s rite of passage as a borrower, Arrietty finds a pin under an antique hutch, and when she sheathes the pin into her scarlet dress the sound is that of a blade being sheathed.  The voice acting of Will Arnett as Pod (Arrietty’s Father) definitely played against his typical over-the-top cynical roles, but rather, a heartwarming everyday down-to-earth father keeping his family’s head above water as they borrow household goods to survive.

I highly recommend this gem because of its beautifully crafted animation and escapist fantasy. Give this flick a chance; you and your family will not regret it. The only drawback that I have with this fantasy, is that, I had to return to the reality of high gas prices, bombastic media partisan rhetoric, impatient customers, inconsiderate, ill-mannered cell phone users, and day-to-day struggles (yes, I am old).I hope you enjoy this review as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to catch you at the cinema.  

Please let me know what you think if you have seen it? How did you feel about the rich hand drawn animation? What did you feel the film lacked or was it overexposed? Did you like the theme or did you find it too ambiguous? The film is an adaptation of The "Borrowers" by Mary Norton . The screenplay was scripted by Hayao Miyazaki and Keiko Niwa, and directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi. The Secret World of Arrietty (2010): released here in the U.S.A. February 17, 2012.