The Lorax

The Lorax is a nice little movie with an important message.  Children will love the film and they won’t be able to help but grasp the theme.  There is enough fun stuff in this movie that most adults will be able to enjoy itas well, for the most part.  That’s the good.

Now for the bad.  I felt the movie’s deliverance of the central environmental theme was heavy handed and politically driven.  There was absolutely no subtlety.  While I enjoyed the characters, especially the forest creatures, by the end, I was pretty tired of being bombarded by propaganda.  I get it – let’s save the trees.

I am not particularly thrilled about this new trend I am seeing in Hollywood – that of delivery of political propaganda via children’s movies.  Our kids get enough stuff thrown at them in everyday life.  Do they really need to be brainwashed so thoroughly in the theater?

Don’t get me wrong.  The message is a vital one.  We need to curtail our destruction of the rain forests and of all trees in general.  Yes, we do need to find a way to get away from packaging everything in environmentally damaging plastics.  Yes, we need to find a way to get closer to nature and away from the concrete jungles.  Our children do need to be exposed to the knowledge we are slowly destroying our planet.  I just wish the message could be delivered in a manner not so overwhelmingly blunt.

I can’t believe this movie was released in 3D form at all.  There was very little in the film that would have been greatly enhanced by 3D.  It is just another way for them to dip their greedy little hands deeper into our shallow pockets.  Did the people in charge even consider the irony of handing out plastic glasses for a film that so strongly preaches about the environment?  Nope, they didn’t.  Either that or they just don’t care really.  We did not watch in 3D and there was reason to either.  My recommendation is to wait for the DVD.

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