The elephant with a big heart

The opening lines of well-loved poem go like this.  On the 15th of May in the jungle of Nool/ in the heat of the day/ in the cool of the pool/ he was splashing/ enjoying the jungle’s great joys/ when Horton, the elephant heard a small noise.

And what did Horton hear? He heard a cry for help from a tiny, tiny, tiny Who. And what is a Who? It is a small creature from the land of Who-ville, which is also a tiny, tiny, tiny place. Do you know how tiny Who-ville is? It is so tiny that it is located on a speck of dust. 

This bit of dust and all the Whos in it, live peacefully on a dandelion. The flower likes to dance with the wind, splash in the rain and smile at the sun.  But one day, the Who-ville dust is removed from its safe place and it is now falling fast to distraction taking all the Whos to certain death.

But not if Horton can help it. The elephant tells himself, “A person is a person no matter how small.” and then off he goes to save the dust and Who-ville.

Now there is only one writer who could have created a whole world on a bit of dust. Take note, it is not even on a grain of sand but on a tiny, tiny, tiny speck of dust. But that is not surprising because Horton Hears a Who! is another story by Teodore Geisel, whom everybody knows as Dr. Seuss, the man whose flair for rhymes and for the whimsical still knows no equal.

Dr. Seuss also made a cat, who lives in a hat, green eggs, a wocket in your pocket, a Grinch who stole Christmas and many other strange but lovable characters. These were created for a series of reading books for young children. This happened over 50 years ago and since then kids everywhere have grown up learning to read their first English words with Dr. Seuss.

Horton is one of the most lovable among the Dr. Seuss characters. He is gentle and kind, friendly and purposeful. Though big and bumbly and a bit dumb-witted, he shows selflessness in taking on the gargantuan task of saving Who-ville. While almost everyone around him is asking why, saying don’t,  belittling his efforts, are plainly unconcerned or disbelieving in the Whos, Horton, the savior, plods on, clinging tightly to the flower with its precious bit of dust.

Horton’s adventures are presented in easy-on-the-eyes text and drawings in the book. And I am sure that all those who recall those pages were happy to see those soft and fuzzy images come to life in the movie version of Horton Hears a Who!. 

Forget happy, I think the word here should be ecstatic because for the first time there is a motion picture based on a Dr. Seuss story whose look retains the innocent charm of the original.

Previous attempts made, most notably with How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Cat in the Hat,   resulted in horrible duds. 

I believe that the main reason these failed was because the producers employed live-action instead of animation. Live action requires live actors who despite all the prosthetics and CGI rendering can never approximate the look of the familiar illustrations. Can you imagine a live actor as Mickey Mouse?

Besides, actors do have a tendency to overact and the sight of a Method-steeped Grinch or cat in a hat in a garish colored set can be really unbearable. Remember, Jim Carrey as the Grinch and Mike Myers as the cat were actually painful to watch.

Horton escaped this problem by being entirely animated. Directed by Jimmy Hayward and Steve Marino and done at 20th Century Fox by the team responsible for Ice Age, it is such a visual delight.  The lush forest of Nool, the airy Who-ville and all of the characters are presented in soft-rounded lines that seem to have been filled in by colored pencils or chalk.

The action moves smoothly and with airy naturalness. This holds true be it a scene where Horton is pelted with bananas by naughty monkeys, or chasing the dust across a heavenly field of clover or being scolded by a moralizing kangaroo. 

There were obvious efforts to flesh out the characters with the addition of subplots and to spice up the dialogue with wisecracks from popular films or TV shows. Those were probably times when the directors forgot that Dr. Seuss never intended Horton to delve into family problems or play in comedy clubs. Thankfully, only snippets of those made the final cut.

Thankfully too, Horton never had to cope with Jim Carrey’s mug. The actor is back with Dr. Seuss as the elephant with a big heart. He still shows hints of getting carried away at times but because he is technically disembodied here, he fails to do damage to the sweet, sweet tale.