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?