I Love You, Phillip Morris

"The Many Lives and One Life-Term of Steven Russell"
or  

"Hold me, Kiss me, Make me Write Bad Checks..."

 

I can see why Jim Carrey wanted to do this, although the box-office returns might not be up to the block-busting weekend standards his films are used to. The writing team of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (who also directed) had previously written one of the most ribald Christmas movies ever made—Bad Santa (they also wrote the first Cats & Dogs, but let's not stray there). For anyone who doesn't like Christmas movies, Bad Santa was a tonic, a mean-spirited slash & burn of every sentiment and cliche associated with the Holiday. It's so black-hearted that, to this day, it is tough for me to watch a Christmas movie now with any sort of innocence, so caustic and toxic is that movie. That it ended up with a jaded heart of gold somewhere amidst the bloody gristle was an astonishing accomplishment, and made me anticipate what they might foist on the innocent audience next.

Their latest, I Love You, Phillip Morris, has the proverbial "something to offend everybody." And it is relentless in its attempt to shock. That the story is, essentially, true (and chronicled in the book "I Love you, Phillip Morris: A True Story of Life, Love and Prison Breaks" by Steve McVicker, about the mis-adventures of Steven Jay Russell) only proves the adage that truth is stranger than fiction. Especially when the truth involves a lot of fiction. The writer-director team only have to find punch-lines in the various scenes in order to push it into the comedy realm. Absurdism rules. Love will do that to you.

The film begins with Steve Russell (Carrey) flat-lining in a hospital bed, his life passing before his eyes, and thus, too, through the projector aperture. His normal life turned upside-down when he learns that he's adopted, he starts living his life as a non-person, as one who doesn't exist. But, existing with a 163 I.Q. means you have a lot of time on your hands to think things up to do. It's a bit like the wondrous aspect of Groundhog Day—what would you do with the time you have if every day had a "Reset" button at the end? Steve Russell has his own "Reset" button, and just one life to live, so he spends it as a completely self-absorbed unit, grabbing at the possibilities of life by any means necessary, including lying, cheating and stealing. A complete sociopath, the only thing limiting him is what he hasn't learned to get away with yet. He starts as an ordinary family man, becoming a policeman, a church organist and living a lie. Then a near-fatal car-crash at a crossroads snaps him into an epiphany: he's going to live the life he's always wanted out in the open, as long as how he does so stays in the background. He openly leads a gay lifestyle, leaving his wife and child, bankrolling everything through frauds of one type or another, until it all lands him in prison.   

Then, the real fun begins.

For the secret of Steven Russell is to find the weak links in society's infrastructure and take advantage of them. In prison, he meets and falls in love with Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor), who might uncharitably be called a 'weak link"—as he "sees the good in everybody," and for Russell, that's finding his soul-mate, easy to admire and easy to be false to. 

 
So much lying, deception, robbing, stealing, impersonation and chicanery goes on in this film that, finally, it is a bit numbing. By the time Russell pulls off his biggest deception (and it's a doozy, not only in the difficulty of pulling it off, but in the harm that it can inflict), nothing surprises...or shocks. So much time has been spent in the red-line of your sensibilities, that your meter emerges pretty much pegged. It's going to take a lot of time looking at puppies in order to Brillo the sourness out of your skull. 

Except...I Love You, Phillip Morris is kind of sweet. Despite being a lying sack, Steven Russell is a pretty devoted guy, going to extremes for those he loves, and...yes...even dying for them. It's horrifying. But, its heart is in the right place.  Ficarra/Requa can be counted on to find the silver linings in the dark clouds, as well as peeing in the punch-bowl. Every scene has a 90° swerve on what its about—sweet to sour, darkness to light. One of my favorite scenes has Phillip bribing a cell-neighbor to play "Chances Are" (Johnny Mathis, natch')—because the thug has the only cassette player—so that he and Steven can dance and snuggle in the cell they share. We watch as they dance slowly in silhouette, the song warbling through the cell-block until the guards yell "lights out" and start screaming at the thug to turn off the music, which he refuses to do. Pretty soon, there's a small riot outside the cell as the guards run in en masse, beating and tasering the yelling music-provider, merely heard in the background, as we focus on Steven and Phillip lost in their dance and each other—the world has gone away.

Nice. Creepy and violently funny, but nice. And smart. And tells you all you need to know about Steven and Phillip's devotion. The film-makers got their act down, but the yin and yang of extremes don't help Carrey and MacGregor, who struggle to maintain a consistent tone in their characters scene-to-scene. At times, Carrey is so arch you wonder how anyone could be conned by this cartoon character, and MacGregor veers from teeth-jarringly sweet to pathetically whiny. But, when the comedy turns to drama, the two seem to snap into place to make it work...as a real scene, which tends to nullify the comedy that has gone before. It's a tightrope-walk to be sure, but there's an awful lot of nervous-making swaying going on.

I don't say this very often, but this is one of those movies you worry about recommending because there is so much material that could give frail audiences "the vapors," but if you steel yourself—maybe get a speeding ticket on the way to the theater, pay your taxes that day—you might have a darkly good time.

The Real Steven Russell (I think)



A Christmas Carol (2009)

Christmas is Monday. B/CL is closed on Mondays...like theaters and like museums...so I won't be posting then. Besides, it's Christmas, Scrooge!  So, here's what I would've posted on Monday were I posting.

Written at the time of this version's release (Oh, don't worry! I'm sure another version is coming out shortly).

"God Bless Us, Every Mega-Pixel" 

  

Everyone has a favorite "Christmas Carol" (or I should say, "version" of "A Christmas Carol").* A novella, it is the perfect length for adaptation to movie (with some padding) or television special (with some commercials). And being as it's in the Public Domain, anybody can adapt it without paying any money to Mr. Dickens (who probably haunts the producers, every one!). Hence the title: Disney's 'A Christmas Carol.'tm **

 

Disney may own it, but it's Robert Zemeckis and Jim Carrey's "A Christmas Carol," and it stands up against even beloved ghosts of "Christmas Carols" past. Face it. There are so many, that presentation becomes the main criterion to base a judgement, like "Hamlet." And format has a lot to do with what drives Zemeckis' version. Skip the 3-D aspect for a moment. This motion capture-CG "take" does some very interesting things with the story (adapted within a farthing of Dickens' original by Zemeckis himself) that are only possible with animation—the ghosts being integral to the story.

"A Christmas Carol" is a ghost story. The ghosts and their tours of Scrooge's life past, present and future must be enough to slap Scrooge giddy, make him "scared straight," turn his perspective from "profit" to "a common good." 

In other words, it must turn him from a "cool, conservative man" to a "bleeding heart liberal."*** You have to have really scary ghosts to do that. Really scary ghosts. Any half-steps and Scrooge would be a "champagne liberal," and what good are they?

In this version, Carrey not only plays "Scrooge" (through Zemeckis' ever-improving "motion-capture" technique) but also the three Ghosts: a cooing Irish flame for the past, a roaring Scottish present, and a funereally silent Future. Each has their own presentation of their visions, Past whisking Scrooge to his old haunts, Present turning Scrooge's sitting room into a camera obscura to spy the current Christmas, flinging Scrooge to a stage street to present Want and Ignorance, two feral spirits—the one growing up violent behind prison bars, the other morphing into a hooker and into a straight-jacketed mad-woman. And Future, in a neat touch, forms itself from Scrooge's own shadow. 

There emerges during the sequence a chase as Scrooge is pursued by his own nightmarish funeral cortege pulled by two red-eyed horses, a bit that old Walt would have been proud of. It soon deteriorates into a demonstration of 3-D (which Zemeckis and Pixar are already masters of—the previews of James Cameron's Avatar shows a few problems) as bedlam as a mouse-sized Scrooge must scramble through the sewers to escape a terrible fate. One could live without it, as well as the "snuffing" episode of Christmas Past were the sequence not a vivid demonstration of just how well Zemeckis uses the technology to bring a life-like edge to the movie. And that's where this "Christmas Carol" truly makes its mark. 

Where this version of "A Christmas Carol" is unique is that this marks the occasion when "motion capture" CG "got the faces right." Zemeckis' previous experiment in this realm, Beowulf, had an odd, plasticene feel to it, mouths didn't crinkle correctly in speech, faces wobbled in perspective. Not here. Carrey is a broad actor, to be sure. But he's also an actor of simultaneous quicksilver subtleties, and this film captures it all. It's one thing to flit the camera perspective through snow-storms and sail through the chains of a scale, falling chestnuts, and the "eye" of a wreath (all done in the film's credits), but it's quite another artistic thing to capture the look of pleased instant love on young Ebeneezer's face when he first meets his beloved Belle (Robin Wright Penn), or to show the pleading terror and remorse when a ghostly Scrooge comes "face-to-face" with a mourning Bob Cratchit (a perfect Gary Oldman). Keep your dizzying flights of fancy 3-D. It's in those moments of intricate expression when "Disney's 'A Christmas Carol'" truly soars.

* Well, since you asked, I have my own favorites—usually the ones that are a bit scarier in their psychic psychological warfare on Scrooge. I like the "Alastair Sim" version often sighted as a favorite, and love the "George C. Scott" version for television from 1984 (he's scarier at the end than at the beginning!), but my favorite—and this is probably a case of "Mom's Apple Pie Syndrome"—is "Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol," which, even though it is a musical, even though it is a cartoon and even though Scrooge is Jim Backus, still manages to pack an emotional wallop, more than any "live" version I've seen, including this version.  

** They've already done a version with Mickey Mouse: "Mickey's Christmas Carol" (1983). Scrooge McDuck played Scrooge. Natch.  

*** I have to bring this up: a couple years ago one of the Zucker bros. directed a conservative version of "A Christmas Carol," but it took the Christmas out of it—I guess it's "An X-mas Carol," then,...talk about your "Wars on the Holidays"(sic)—called "An American Carol" in which a Michael Moore type (played by Chris Farley's brother—more popularly known as "Chris Farley's brother") is shown the Ghosts of America Past, Present, and Future in order to "scare" him into being more conservative—frankly the Bush II Administration had the opposite effect on me. Not to paint with too large a brush, but conservative political humor tends to be so ham-fisted and structurally unsound that it can't even see its own hypocritical ironies.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

Written at the time of the film's appearance in a puff of smoke...and featuring a small, but perfectly played part by Alan Arkin, who (contrary to recently published reports) I believe to be immortal.

"Sometimes the Magic Works...."

or

Wanna See it Again? No?

Repetition, repetition, repetition. It is the secret to prestidigitation. Do it over and over and over again, honing the skill, making it more fluid, perfecting the illusion, increasing the speed, so you leave the audience dazzled by the pixie dust of distraction. Then, once perfected, you do it again and again and again in performance, producing a jaded hardening of the artistry, the audience becoming a revolving series of marks you hit over and over again. You lose respect of the audience and the skills and the gig. The magic goes away.

Repetition is the key to The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, too. One of its major themes is the drudgery of performing the same tricks over and over and over again, a process that turns the titular magician (Steve Carell) into a zombie with a spray-tan, barely able to speak to his partner Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi) as they perform the umpteenth repetition of their standard Vegas act.  Not even the addition of a new assistant, Jane (Olivia Wilde) can stop the ennui, as the self-absorbed Wonderstone keeps calling her "Nicole" for some reason. Probably because he can, she looks more like a "Nicole" than a "Jane," and he doesn't care. At all. So, he always calls her "Nicole." "Jane" she immediately corrects, but he doesn't get it.

Repetition is also the key to Burt Wonderstone's comedy. They throw out that "Nicole"/"Jane" joke a half-dozen times throughout the movie, and a good many others, too, usually to expose the shallowness and perpetual myopia of the characters as well as the flatness of their learning curves.

That flatness, that lethargy or lack of magic, is the starting point of the character arcs. Burt is at the top of his game, successful, bored, settled into the day-to-day—the romantic encounters he engineers (if you can call them romantic) are one-night stands he pulls from the audience, provides a quick tour of his pad, a complimentary memento arranged for the evening, the signing of a non-disclosure agreement, and it all ends when he pulls a disappearing act. Whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Except the magic. It left a long time ago. 

Burt (Carell) and Anton (Buscemi)—"Pure Magic"

Because success isn't very funny, Burt and Anton stagnate, especially when there are newer, edgier, geekier magicians with reality shows—like the masochistic, egotistic Steve Gray (Jim Carrey) who bills himself as "the brain rapist." The owner of Bally's (James Gandolfini), where the two have performed to sell-out crowds for years, sees the attendance softening, and demands something more "street" than his regulars can provide, and so they get canned, split up, try to rebuild, crack up, and then the story can actually begin. 

As typical romantic comedies go, this one is by the numbers: Burt's career set-back is completely unprepared for, and he finds that without the safety net of Anton, and the routine of their act, that he can't start over, or reclaim his former glory, so before long he finds himself sinking to rock bottom (performing magic at an old folks home), where, by the prestidigitation of convenient screen-writing, he finds his magic mojo again in the form of Rance Holloway (Alan Arkin), mentor and Obi-Wan Kenobi-figure who critiques Burt's work and attitude ("What, magic makes you feel 80 again?" cracks Burt).

Anybody knows, if they've taken a screenwriting class, or seen any Tom Cruise movie from the '70's-'80's knows how it will run in its course (success kills your soul, there's a rival/villain, and one must have a sage elder to find the proper path), but at least the thing maintains an entertainment value throughout and right up to the end.  Thanks to the mixture of the personalities—Carell, Buscemi, Wilde, Arkin (I'll see anything with him in it), and especially Carrey, who makes the most of his small screen-time—there's always a sprinkling of surprise, a detail, a quirk to appreciate among the over-arching familiarity of it. There's something magical about that.

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (Brad Silberling, 2004) O-kayyy. So far, for Hallowe'en on this site we've featured apocalyptic religious cults, invisible men, sadistic versions of "Big Brother" and lots and lots of creepy things. I'd like to say the best is yet to come, but, no. Things are going to get worse. Much, much worse...to the point, where I have a true sense of dread about what's coming up—not just in the posting, but in the very writing of it. Dear, dear me. Oh, it's going to be awful...simply awful. Really, people should have better things to do than to make movies like the ones I'll be considering in the next couple of weeks. 

But (sigh) it is Hallowe'en Season. And one must simply get this stuff out of our systems, so that we can vote with clear consciences, and think of our fellow citizens and how they are coping with a pandemic, and social distancing, and wearing masks, and interviews from the census by bright ardent people who are only doing the right thing, as well as the intricacies of working at home while also supervising the on-line education of our precious dutiful children.

But in the warm comfort of the domicile, many flights of stairs from the garret in which this is written, the Hallowe'en movie of choice is this (to be heretofore crunched to Unfortunate Events to avoid a cramp). It might be the best movie Barry Sonnenfeld never made. It has his insensibility, his florid camera moves,* snappy editing, austere framing and live-action cartoonish gambits (lots of shots of peoples' faces gaping into the camera).

But, it didn't have enough budget and so Brad Silberling took over the project.

Silberling is a chameleonic director; he tends to take on the characteristics of whatever project falls into his lap—handy for his long tenure as a television director of such idiosyncratic shows as "NYPD Blue," but making him hard to pin down as a feature director. How do you explain the disparity between Unfortunate Events and his unfortunate City of Angels? Before you attempt that, let me trump it by adding the even more unfortunate Will Ferrell vehicle, Land of the Lost.

So, it's perhaps fortunate for Silberling that so much of "Unfortunate Events" depends on others. The Lemony Snicket-styled writing—a bit like "Miss Manners" without her morning pick-me-up—of dark, despairing fore-shadowing** inspires a switch-back Rankin-Bass-styled opening that comes crashing to a halt. ("This would be an excellent time to walk out of the theater, living room, or airplane where this film is being shown." says the Lemony Narrator, as read by Jude Law)

"Fade to Black" is the more appropriate phrase. Fade to monochromatic gothic steam-punk macabre, (which permeates the film, like a lighter version of "The Addams Family") as the film takes up the sad misfortunes of the Beaudelaire orphans: Violet, a voracious inventor (Emily Browning); Klaus, a voracious reader (Liam Aiken); and Sunny, a voracious biter (Kara Hoffman and Shelby Hoffman). When their parents are killed in a mysterious fire, the Estate (executed by a piggish Timothy Spall), the kids are shipped off to the cunning clutches of Count Olaf (Jim Carrey), a despicable actor who only cares for the Beaudelaire fortune. Treated as servants by the fiend, he decides to kill them off when it's determined that he'll only get the money when they're adults. And so he leaves them, locked in a car on a rail-road track with the 11:15 barreling down on them.

What to do, what to do?

Based on the first three "Unfortunate Events" books ("The Bad Beginning," "The Reptile Room," and "The Wide Window,"***), the film is as episodic as could be with the child-endangering machinations of the Count the single unsavory thread running through it. 

Upon Carrey's every entrance, Silberling takes the wise course of just hanging back, giving Carrey a wide shot (with distorting anamorphic lens) and keeping any other actor out of giggling range. So much of his performance is ad-libbed, you could make the case that it's Carrey who's driving the bus; things calm down considerably when Billy Connolly and Meryl Streep take possession of the children (and the movie), but gears up again when Carrey dervishes his way into the scene (Connolly stays out of his way, but Streep engages him, going eye-to-eye).

It's a good thing, too. "Unfortunate Events" could have turned excessively mordant to the point of leeching all the fun out of it, production-designed into stasis if Carrey wasn't there to break windows (and characters) in the proceedings. In that spirit, the cast is rounded out by such anarchic spirits as Catherine O'Hara, Jennifer Coolidge, Cedric the Entertainer, Dustin Hoffman, Jane Lynch, and Craig Ferguson that flit around the corners to keep things from getting too predictable, and deservedly more than a little off-kilter.

* He started out as the Coen Brothers' cinematographer.

** It's fun when doled out in tea-spoons of dread and low dudgeon, but if you want to hear it overdone, listen to the director and author Daniel Handler's commentary track on the DVD. Handler (as "Lemony Snicket") acts like your staid Aunt Petunia, who goes all-fluttery and horrified at the movie, which is funny for ten minutes, then overstays its welcome...by two hours. 

*** Dear reader, do be careful when going to these links, for it appears this Lemony Snicket character wants your e-mail address. The cad. I would be cautious. Very, very cautious.

Almighty Then! or: "How Long Can You Tread Water?"

Bruce Almighty (Tom Shadyac, 2003)/Evan Almighty (Tom Shadyac, 2007)

Bruce Almighty was a gently humanistic take (more like the director's Liar, Liar and Patch Adams, than his anarchic Ace Ventura, Pet Detective) on God and Godliness, a bit like having your eucharistic wafer and abstaining from it, too. Jim Carrey, a frequent Shadyac collaborator, played Bruce Nolan, a rubberly-mobile human interest TV reporter who's became tired of reporting fluff and covets the anchorman's chair. Thinking his lot being...well, like Lot's (or Job's), he blames God for his sorrows, despite having Jennifer Aniston as his supportive live-in girlfriend, a brownstone in New York, a dog who loves him, and—dare we say it—a cushy goddamn reporter's job! 

Not only that, God actually answers his prayers. And not just any God, it's God in the form of Morgan Freeman (type-casting, admit it), the most denominationally-friendly choice for the role, other than Eric Clapton. Bruce Almighty delivered a lot of laughs. Carrey was not so much over-the-medication that he was funny, rather than alarming, and the feel-good message of "we're all just a little bit God" is just theologically mushy enough to satisfy everyone from the self-flagellators to the shakra zulu's....and keep the picketers at bay.

Parting of the tomato soup

But one does wonder: a look at the DVD's "Special Features" shows a definite softening of the material. Carrey with "God" powers goes a bit "Old Testament" in the out-takes, including a sequence that would have fit right in with The Mask featuring Divine Intervention with some car-jackers, some extreme "if-it-bleeds-it-leads" stories, and the further torturing of Steve Carell's rival anchor Evan Baxter, that includes setting his hair on fire during a newscast. Not quite so heart-warming. It would have tilted the film a little bit into the zany/cruel category, that might have upset the Faithful. Still, it's a fun-film that is genuinely funny, and does have its heart in the right place.

So, what in Hell happened to Evan Almighty? There were reports of problems, that the film went waaaaaaaay over-budget, threatening to turn it into the most expensive comedy ever made, and, of course, where Carell was featured only briefly (and brilliantly) in Bruce, it was his cross to bear to stand in for Jim Carrey for the sequel. 

Carell is an incredible talent who can—actually—cross the territories between comedy and drama and do so credibly—given the right material. But he's not good at everything. Bruce Almighty showed a gift for slapstick—his Tourette's news-anchor was one of the funniest things in it, but he's at his best as a low-energy Buster Keaton, standing stone-faced while the house falls around him. Evidently having everything that can possibly go wrong in the "Noah" scenario didn't result in a laugh riot. There are just so many poop jokes you can wring out of the "ark." 

As an experiment, I have had folks who have seen Evan Almighty—and not found it funny—sit through Bruce Almighty and howl. Comedy is, of course, subjective, and what will work in one movie doesn't necessarily work when done again. But,to have such disparate reactions?

So, Evan Almighty is just genuinely un-funny.

Isn't there a Bible story about going to the well one too many times?

Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!

Written at the time of the film's release in 2008

Who Put the Pixels in my Seuss?

Frankly, it's about time!

We, as movie-goers (and parents) have had to suffer through two live action adaptations of beloved Dr. Seuss books, that took them, stretched them to ungainly proportions making them loud and obnoxious, tossed in the obligatory fart and sex jokes with self-indulgent Jim Carrey and Mike Myers performances, and probably, most egregious of all, drained as much of the Seussian outlandishness in design to make it all work in a "real" world. I'm looking at you, Ron Howard, and Bo Welch! You destroyed my childhood!!*

Actually, what they did was make crappy films out of very good, inspiring source material. It takes some real lack of talent to do that.
The Seuss estate has tried mightily to make who-hay out of the Good Doctor's (real name: Theodore Geisel-RIP) post-war output** with their web-sites and Broadway seussicals and elephantine films, and have been largely successful, ca$h-wise, even if their value as far as representations in other media have been failures. 

Somebody must have realized that, because someone had the wise idea to return Geisel to the medium to which he has successfully worked in the past—animation*** A brilliant idea that, if a no-brainer, and it will hopefully save the rest of the Seuss library from destruction at the hands of auteur's with big budgets and few ideas. Imagine what Pixar could do with a Seuss film?**** As it is, Horton Hears a Who! was in good hands with the Ice Age crew--they seem, in sensibility, the ones who are studying the Looney Tunes model for making animated entertainment, and the resulting film, though stretching the premise to its breaking point, is never less than entertaining, and frequently fiendishly brilliant in how it has represented Seussian ideas and concepts.Okay, the casting is a bit top-heavy. Jim Carrey is the elephant in the room, but he's just as adept at vocal gymnastics and although Horton now seems to be on a perpetual coffee jag, it gooses the pace of the material in a not-inoffensive and practical way. The fact that he isn't "live" and stuck in some faux-Seuss costume probably helps restrain him, as well. Steve Carrell, who one worries about how far he can stretch, is equally good as the bumbling mayor of Who-ville who has trouble making his presence known just about anywhere. Here's perfect casting--the "concerned mother kangaroo" who becomes increasing strident to "protect the children"--Carol Burnett. Seth Rogan is there and Will Arnett, but I doubt folks will be clamoring to see the movie because of them--the voice-casting is spot on, with only one possible exception. The somewhat unctuous narration is by CBS Neuss' Charles Osgood--possibly Dr. Seuss's biggest fan. He's fine. But his warm, soothing tones seems to be assuring the entire time that everything will be all right, and that everything is lovely, when what is needed is a voice that has some grit in it--which is why Boris Karloff as the Narrator for the animated "Grinch" was such a brilliant stroke.
And the design--the design of the thing is beautiful and so Seuss. It would take another viewing (or three) to see all the details and great ideas (and Seuss in-jokes) filling the frames.

Fortunately, the film is good enough to bear up to repeat viewings. And it does one brilliant, little snarky thing: It co-opts a 70's rock-ballad to make fun of most cartoons' tendencies to end with a heart-felt song. It's hilarious.
Dr. Seuss was not only employed to help kids read, he wrote his stories to make kids think. "Horton Hears a Who" was written as a plea for tolerance in an intolerant time,***** and its message "A person's a person no matter how small" has been co-opted by the anti-abortion crowd--Mrs. Dr. Seuss was quite miffed when the premiere was disrupted by chanting protesters, whereas the good Dr. would have tried to kick their collective asses (he threatened to sue one group for using the quote on their stationary)--and this movie is full of messages for all to read into. There's a climate change theme, there's the intolerance theme, there's the "be-yourself" theme, the "tyranny of the mob" theme, the impotent figurehead-non-democratic council-strength in numbers democracy theme, the "make yourself heard" theme, and the fact the mayor has 97 children (96 girls and 1 boy) and uses a timer to allocate only so many seconds of attention to each should say something to somebody. It tends to put a fuzzy edge to "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant"

But Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! is faithful. Almost 100%.

* Well, not really, but I've always wanted to write that, seeing as how so many "chat-room fan-boys" out there have written the phrase every time somebody has done something that doesn't fit into their limited "world-view." It's the semi-adult version of stamping your little foot. Frankly, I'd rather they held their breath until they turned blue.

**We won't see anything done with Private Snafu--with which he collaborated with the Termite Terrace crowd--that would make an interesting law-suit if Warner Brothers decided to cash in on the Seuss name--or some of his more racy material.

*** Even before the Chuck Jones-produced "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" or the original cartoon version of "Horton Hears a Who," Geisel worked with Bob Clampett and Warner Brothers to make a short of "Horton Hatches an Egg" in 1942.

**** Jimmy Hayward, who along with Steve Martino, directed Horton... was a Pixar animator. It's their first feature...well done.******

***** Geisel was a leftist--but his buzzard Vlad Vladikoff, is surely Soviet-based, and, supposedly the Wikersham Brothers--the ape-boys (who are animated splendidly in this) are based on Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

****** Cool! The asterisks get an asterisk. As a post-script, the two directors took wildly divergent paths: Jimmy Hayward went to live-action, where he directed Jonah Hex (anybody remember that one? John Brolin as DC's disfigured western anti-hero? Didn't think so); Martino stayed with animation, supervising the "Ice Age" franchise and directing the rather lovely new Peanuts movie.

Okay, everybody has to mess with the material in some way (Clampett's cartoon had a fish that looked like Peter Lorre shooting its brains out), and this is how Martino and Hayward mess with this version—but it's so weird I like it.