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Anyone else would ignore
it, but he tracks the speck down (cue plenty of surprisingly decent
sight gags as an elephant rumbles through the jungle after a teeny-tiny
speck) and discovers that the speck is in fact home to an entire world
called Whoville, where the Mayor (the voice of Steve Carell) has things
tough enough without learning that his entire world is just a tiny
speck that could be destroyed at any moment.
Horton's
problem is getting the speck somewhere safe while the rest of the
jungle's residents think his crazy talk about a tiny world is upsetting
the balance of things; the Mayor has to persuade a city where nothing
has ever gone wrong that there could be some very big trouble
ahead.
Now, this really is a great kids movie that won't bore
grown-ups.
Both Horton and the Mayor's stories are equally interesting,
the jokes are almost always funny, the serious moments aren't
belaboured, and while the tone is often a little uneven (in padding out
Dr Suess' short book, liberties have been taken and they don't always fit)
there's a lot more good than bad.
It's not perfect (there is a final musical number that is just wrong)- but for once a bit
of Dr Suess' magic has made it onto the screen. DVD EXTRAS with Sean Lynch
Along with the usual director's commentaries and such, there are
some excellent Special Editions floating around. A lot of the time,
Special Edition packaging will depend on where you buy it from (there
are some cool tins and cases on offer if you know where to find them),
but they are well worth hunting down.
There are a bunch of
featurettes on offer here, all of them rather interesting (as always
seems to be the case with the behind the scenes work of these types of
star-studded CGI epics).
However, for value, you simply can't go past the excellent Ice Age
short (Dreamworks have essentially copied the Pixar marketing mould and
are making it their own) which is well worth revisiting a few times
over.
Conclusion:
Movie 80% Extras: 80%
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