| | This is one of the few Seuss books I never read to my children. My girls wanted to see the movie this weekend so we went. It's an awful movie.
I thought the animation was good. The characters were likable. There were fun interactions between them. I think the modeling stayed fairly true to Seuss illustrations. Those were the good parts.
From the beginning I knew what I was in for when it started with a chorus song about how everything is made of plastic and perfect. Everyone loves breathing bottled air - its so great.
Of course there are the greedy capitalists who want to do nothing but destroy nature for personal gain.
I got the sense that the movie was a constant barrage of disconnected ideas or half thought out beliefs. On the one hand the Once-ler uses his selfish motives for his profit driven enterprise. The main character selfishly desires a tree to plant in order to gain a girl. So is selfish motive bad or not?
The Once-ler is intelligent enough to come up with an incredible product but is purposely left stupid so he cuts down all the trees in the process of making it.
The trees inexplicably refuse to grow back until the "unless" comes along to plant the last seed and the trees magically come back.
Toward the end the audience is met with yet another song and the words contain the statement "What you do not sow you should not reap." Why not?
The movie gets survival of the fittest wrong - or I don't understand it. The capitalist Once-ler sings a song about being the fitter species - the rest must go! I thought it had to do with how well a species was able to avoid going extinct. Apparently the connection is the "dog eat dog" of capitalism and the "dog eat dog" of nature - that's evolution and the survival of the fittest - its evil.
All of the forest creatures go somewhere else to live by the Lorax. I guess there was a nice place for them to live - somewhere the human population wouldn't go and destroy.
The audience is asked "Don't you have what you need - don't you have enough?"
Interestingly I do like one thing - there didn't appear to be any governmental authority. Everyone simply lived their lives well without it. But of course the Orwellian all seeing eye was a part of the other greedy capitalist hell bent on keeping the last seed from being planted. So perhaps Mr. Ohare producer of bottled air was supposed to be a capitalist government.
I wish I could remember more.
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