Movie review: ‘Lorax’ remains faithful to original spirit

"Dr. Seuss' The Lorax" proves definitively that when it comes to big-screen adaptations of the good doctor's work, animation trumps live action.

Since Dr. Seuss died in 1991, Hollywood has produced two horrendous live-action adaptation of his classic books, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and "The Cat in the Hat," and one surprisingly fine animated adaptation, "Horton Hears a Who."

Produced by the creative team behind "Horton," "The Lorax" doesn't entirely live up to that film, but it still succeeds in the tricky task of remaining true to the text and the spirit of one of Seuss' brief books while expanding it to feature length. The Lorax himself, voiced by Danny DeVito, tells us as much in a brief introduction when he says, "There's more to the story than what's on the page."

Written during the burgeoning environmental movement of the early 1970s, "The Lorax" is perhaps Seuss' most downbeat work, beginning and ending in a wasteland that was once a vibrant forest of Truffula trees. In the story, a regretful creature named the Once-ler, his face never seen, recounts how he ignored the warnings of a sprite called the Lorax, who emerged from a stump to speak for the trees, and decimated the forest in the name of industry and profit.

The movie includes the book in full, but adds fresh material to the start and finish and to the middle as well by telling the original story in installments. Director Chris Renaud (whose previous film was the delicious "Despicable Me") sidesteps the book's gloom by setting the new material in Thneedville, a big, colorful metropolis whose happy residents are oblivious to the gray blight just outside their city walls.

In the opening number, the Thneedvillians sing about their love for inflatable shrubbery and battery operated plastic trees, how they don't care what happens to their garbage and how they are happy to pay for the fresh air manufactured by industrialist Aloysius O'Hare (Rob Riggle).

Emerging from this song and dance routine is young Ted (Zac Efron), who like most of his neighbors never gave a thought to the environment. But Ted has a crush on Audrey (Taylor Swift), who would be a tree-hugger if trees still existed. Incidentally, Ted and Audrey are the actual names of Dr. Seuss and his wife, who is still alive and listed as executive producer.

To woo fair Audrey, Ted hopes to find a live tree. His grandmother (Betty White) points him toward the Once-ler (Ed Helms), now living as a hermit outside the city. After a brief but creepy journey through the city's hidden waste disposal system, Ted arrives at the Once-ler's house and Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio's screenplay arrives at Seuss' original narrative.

If the book was a cautionary fable, the film can be a raucous satire that takes aim at consumerism. A pair of marketers convinces O'Hare to begin selling air in plastic bottles. "Our research shows if you put stuff in plastic bottles, people will buy it." They then show a parody of a beer commercial that ends with the admonition, "Please breathe responsibly." The targets of those gags are obvious. Much subtler are the jabs at global-warming deniers.

"The Lorax" delivers its message more aggressively than "Wall-E," and its sense of humor is more biting. The filmmakers recapture the immediacy of the book. Dr. Seuss didn't hide the moral to this story behind metaphor, no butter battles standing in for nuclear proliferation or vainglorious turtles standing in for Hitler.

Fresh from labeling the Muppets a bunch of hippies, FOX News blowhards didn't wait for "The Lorax's" release to decry it as a liberal attack on capitalism. The movie isn't against capitalism, but some of the evils that can accompany it, namely greed and social irresponsibility. Here again, the filmmakers remain true to Dr. Seuss, a proud liberal. If "The Lorax" doesn't speak for the trees, why bother filming it?

• Jeffrey Westhoff is a movie critic for Shaw Media. His reviews run Fridays in the Kane County Chronicle. Email him at spark@kcchronicle.com.