The Lorax (2012)

Unless Someone Like You Cares a Whole Lot, Nothing is Going to Get Better. It’s not.

Today’s movie came as a request from my friend Forty, but I’m not entirely sure why. My best guess is that he’s a dad and that means that I, as his single review-writing friend, should be forced to watch the same crap that he must at the behest of his daughter. So I guess that means today’s review came as a request from Eden. Either way, it was a request, and one easy enough to comply with as my roommate Richurd had purchased this movie on Vudu some time ago, so it was ready for me whenever I got around to it. I also get to go into this review relatively clean because I have next to no memory of the Dr. Seuss book that this movie is based on. Something about trees, I think? Well, we’ll find out as I review The Lorax, based on a Dr. Seuss children’s book, written for the screen by Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul, directed by Chris Renaud and Kyle Balda, and featuring the voices of Zac Efron, Ed Helms, Danny DeVito, Taylor Swift, Rob Riggle, Betty White, Jenny Slate, Nasim Pedrad, Stephen Tobolowsky, Elmarie Wendel, and Danny Cooksey.

Ted Wiggins (Zac Efron) lives in the town of Thneedville, a walled city so surrounded by the pollution of industry that they actually sell air in bottles to people, and everything in the city is artificial, including the plants. Ted has a crush on a girl named Audrey (Taylor Swift), who wants to see a real life tree. In order to impress her, he sets out to find a tree. Under the advice of his grandmother, Grammy Norma (Betty White), he tracks down the Once-ler (Ed Helms), who tells Ted how he is responsible for the deforestation because he broke his promise to The Lorax (Danny DeVito), who speaks for the trees because trees have no tongues of their own.

I can’t really say I was disappointed by The Lorax because I went into it with low expectations, but I didn’t think this was that good of a movie. It wasn’t bad; I just felt like I was wasting my time watching it. It wasn’t without a point, but the point it was trying to make was one that I found tedious and ham-fisted. I knew what the message of the movie was going to be before I started watching it, and it did not take long for me to get sick of being beat over the head with it. Yes, deforestation is bad. Yes, every business ever is bad. Nothing good has ever come from cutting down a tree. Even when they cut those trees down to make paper that could be used to print the words of Dr. Seuss. I’m sure it was all printed on recycled paper. It also wasn’t funny. It gained a couple of minor smirks out of me with a couple of cute and quirky comments, but towards the end it had devolved into, “It’s funny when old people do young things like snowboard, isn’t it?” …No, no it’s not.

The biggest issue I took with the movie was its musical numbers. I’ve complained before about musicals forcing their movie to be a musical with pointless and unnecessary musical interludes, but this movie goes even further with that. They give the Once-ler a guitar for no reason other than to make him be able to break into song out of nowhere. Some musicals can get by on this bullshit by having good songs, but the Lorax blew its load in the introduction of the film, as the credits still rolled, and then only gave us mediocre songs or worse.

The thing this movie does right is definitely the look. It captures the wackiness and imagination of Dr. Seuss in a beautiful and colorful CG world. I wouldn’t give much imagination credit to this movie though, since that all came from Seuss, but they captured it well. The settings were evocative and created the mood they wanted. The town was clean and fake, the wilderness before people messed it up was lush and colorful, and the same area after was dark and depressing. They also did a good job of making all the forest creatures overly adorable. The fish were kind of funny and the fat bear made for some easy “This bear likes to eat everything” jokes, but I think my favorite was the tiny duck-like creature that sat around with a dumb look on its face, randomly quacking.

The Lorax isn’t a bad movie. It’s just not a good one. It could get away with beating us over the head with its environmentalist message if it was funny or interesting, but it never really mustered that, try as it might. It also forced itself to be a musical for no good reason, forgetting of course to have some good songs. In its defense, it is a very pretty movie with lots of cute animals, so your kids will probably enjoy it. You, on the other hand, might find it tough to pay attention to, especially numerous times as kids tend to view things. I say skip it. The Lorax gets “You have been warned!” out of “Unless.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people. Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense. Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated. You can also add me on FaceBook and Twitter. Don’t forget to leave me some comments. Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Hop (2011)

Talking Rabbits Freaks Her Out

I confess that the only inspiration behind wanting to watch today’s movie was to shit on it.  I feel like it’s been a while since I really got to ridicule a movie for how bad it was since it seems people have actually been requesting movies that they genuinely want my opinion on, as opposed to movies they just want to punish me with.  But I need to watch a piece of shit every now and then.  It builds up my immune system.  And it’s a lot funnier when I hate the movie and can give you numerous reasons why.  When I saw today’s movie was available in a RedBox, I reserved the shit right out of it.  So let’s get into a movie that you all may have seen commercials for, but were all probably well aware of the fact that you didn’t want to see it.  This movie is Hop, written by Ken Daurio, Brian Lynch, and Cinco Paul, directed by Tim Hill, and starring James Marsden, the voice and physical form of Russell Brand, Kaley Cuoco, the voice of Hugh Laurie, the voice of Hank Azaria, Gary Cole, Elizabeth Perkins, David Hasselhoff, and Chelsea Handler.

On Easter Island (ha ha, fuck you movie), all of the world’s Easter needs are handled underground, run by Mr. Bunny (Hugh Laurie), the current presiding Easter Bunny.  He hopes that his son, E.B. (Russell Brand), will take over for him one day, but EB just wants to play drums and open a vaguely successful string of video game stores that he will later sell to GameStop.  EB runs away to Hollywood in hopes of finding success as a drummer (The White Stripes could use a new one).  His father sends his royal guard, the Pink Berets, after him.  Fred O’Hare (James Marsden) (also, could you lay it off with the puns already?) has just been kicked out of his house by his dad, Henry (Gary Cole), and told to find a job.  His sister, Sam (Kaley Cuoco), lets him stay at a mansion that she’s housesitting.  On the way there, Fred hits EB with his car.  EB’s dead, the end.  Okay, it didn’t go that way.  Instead, EB feigns injury in order to get Fred to take him in.  Through the course of the movie, Fred and EB must find their true calling in life.

I definitely found a few things to make fun of in this movie, but the weirdest thing that happened here is that I did not hate this movie.  I’m a surprised as you are!  This movie is actually pretty cute and I’m sure kids would really like it.  There are even a few jokes in the movie that made me laugh and I did not see that coming at all.  The story of the movie is nothing new and reminded me a little bit of the Prince and the Pauper by the end.  It’s a couple of stories about people that want to do something, or don’t know what they want to do at all, and the people around them just don’t get them, man.  This story is so familiar that I tend to refer to it as “My Life”.  Later on is the Prince and the Pauper part, where Fred decides that he would like to be the Easter Bunny so that EB can go about his dream.  This is around where the story really loses me.  How the hell is a human going to be an Easter Bunny, let alone the Anything Bunny?  It’d make a lot more sense if the chickens that helped out actually took over after their coup d’état.  Chickens make more sense for a holiday that centers around eggs anyway.  And if it was going to be a human, why not a woman instead?  They actually have eggs.  That’d be a pretty icky Easter though, and it’d have to happen every 28 days.  These, of course, were not the only things that didn’t make sense to me in this movie.  First off, why the hell would Sam let her slacker, loser brother housesit a giant and expensive mansion owned by her boss?  The movie actually made the biggest surprise they could have by not actually making him burn the house to the ground by the end of the movie.  He actually left a fairly small footprint on the mansion.  Fred also makes a really big deal about trying to hide the fact that EB is a talking rabbit, but the greater majority of the people in the world inexplicably don’t even bat an eye at it.  Except when it serves the story, that is.  Like when EB makes a scene at Fred’s sister’s Easter play, when people are suddenly interested because they wanted to waste about 10 minutes with a whole ventriloquism bit they wrote.  Also, though you kind of expect their specific talents to play into the resolution of the movie, I felt like it didn’t make that much sense that EB was able to save Easter by playing the drums.  The puns in this movie got on my nerves because it felt like they weren’t even trying.  The upcoming Easter Bunny’s name is EB, the other guy’s name is O’Hare, they work from Easter Island, etc.  They were either not trying or they actually thought this shit was hilarious.  Many other jokes didn’t work in this movie, and some of the stuff just seemed crass, like the random fact that EB shit out Jellybeans.  It’s gross, unnecessary, and the reasoning they tried to make behind it was stupid.  EB showed Fred to prove that he was a special bunny.  Apparently him talking wasn’t getting that job done.  And there’s also one big spoiler that made me have a problem with the entire movie ::SPOILER ALERT:: The Easter Bunny isn’t real.  ::END SPOILER::

The performances in this movie were exactly what they were.  First off, all of the bunnies (and mostly EB) were so ridiculously cute in their animation.  Women will swoon.  I may have swooned myself, but I’m not entirely sure what swooning is.  Is that when you pass out and wake up with no pants on and covered in blood that’s not your own?  EB himself had occasional moments of funniness, but almost as many occasions of annoyance.  I think that’s due to Russell Brand lending his voice to the character.  I’ve always felt like Russell Brand’s idea of comedy was to constantly have things coming out of your mouth and then, even if only 10% are funny or worth hearing, at least people will still leave thinking he was hilarious.  What didn’t annoy me about EB was that he was a fantastic drummer.  Sure, there was no good reason for him to drum in the movie, but he was animated to be good at it.  James Marsden was mostly manic and over the top on his side, with a little bit of stupid mixed in, but he never really bothered me.  Gary Cole was mostly an asshole through the movie.

This movie doesn’t have a lot to offer you unless you have kids, but I think you’ll actually find it mostly cute if you end up watching it with them.  The story is silly, nonsensical, and somewhat dumb, but it’s also really cute and has a couple of funny moments in it.  If you like Russell Brand, that would be a plus for you with this movie.  If you’re like me, he’ll be very hit and miss but bother you much less since you barely have to see his face.  I’ll recommend this movie for kids, but say skip it for the single people.  Hop gets “I am a bunny and am incredibly sexy” out of “This must be the rags part of my rags-to-riches story.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.