By Ryan Parsons | Image property of 20th Century Fox.
Horton Hears a Who!
Blue Sky/20th Century Fox CG animations have always been a hit or miss for me. I absolutely loved the first trailer for Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!, even with some of the childish jokes Fox somehow felt necessary to squeeze in. I even thought the recent clips to surface online showed character, though the sequences did feel long and loud.
It turns out that someone has seen the recent CG creation of Blue Sky, and the response isn't exactly pretty.
Horton Hears a Who! Screened
The good people at AICN have received what looks to be the first screening report for Horton Hears a Who!. My biggest question for CG films usually goes like this: Who are the jokes targeted at? Adults or children? Unfortunately, the reviewer claims that Horton misses both targets.
To be fair to Blue Sky Studios, I thought Ice Age was a pretty decent start, mainly thanks to the visual humour they brought with Scrat's antics. Robots was pretty middle-of-the-road in my eyes but with Horton Hears A Who, they seem to have completed their transition from Pixar-wannabe to Dreamworks-style also-ran. It starts nicely, with some genuinely impressive visuals: photo-realistic water drops on a leaf start a chain reaction that dislodges the Whoville speck and sets the story in motion. And then the rot of overwhelming seen-it-all-before averageness starts to set in. Here comes Jim Carrey (as Horton) doing his wacky thing once more, with a script that's not really worthy of the enthusiasm he puts into it. Now we'll introduce a few cute, happy-meal-destined sidekicks, most of whom are voiced by someone you'll have heard of, with Seth Rogen being given the most screen-time. He made me laugh a few times, I'm gracious enough to admit.
While the review begins to look positive, it concludes with 'lackluster effort.'
Lackluster? As in good lackluster?
Check out the entire report on Horton Hears a Who! at AICN.
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! opens to theatres on March 14th.
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