ANIMATION; 1hr 26min
VOICES BY: Danny DeVito, Zac Efron, Taylor Swift
Forest grump: the Lorax
Thneedville, the home of entirely artificial vegetation, is a rainbow-shaded town overseen by a power-mad little man (voiced by Rob Riggle) with a creepily symmetrical haircut. Outside its walls lies a wasteland into which intrepid 12-year-old Ted (Efron) ventures in search of a real, live tree for a certain girl he fancies (Swift as Audrey). Its only inhabitant is the curmudgeonly Once-ler (Ed Helms), who has a cautionary tale to tell of paradise found and lost, and a moustachioed furball, the Lorax (DeVito). As the peppery, orange guardian of a cotton candy–coloured forest whose silky Truffula trees the young Once-ler felled to feed his commercial obsession, the Lorax is the voice of reason, which, in business, doesn’t necessarily prevail…
The moral of this buzzy Dr. Seuss’s story is that contrary to what Wall Street ’s Gordon Gekko might like to believe, greed is not good. Which nobody can deny and better yet, with its effervescent energy, the vivid package is kid super-friendly. Leave it to the Dr. (aka children’s author Theodor Geisel) and co-directors Chris Renaud and Kyle Balda to pull off a lesson in ethics for five-year-olds and their folks.
