"Horton Hears a Who"

Directed by: Jimmy Hayward, Steve Martino

Starring: (voices of) Jim Carrey, Steve Carell, Carol Burnett, Seth Rogen, Isla Fisher

MPAA rating: G Running time: 88 minutes

Best suited for: anyone who remembers Dr. Seuss; anyone who wants their kids to remember Dr. Seuss

Least suited for: anyone catching "Rambo" for the third or fourth time; some Dr. Seuss purists
"Knock, knock."
"Who's there?"
"Yes, they are."

Okay, so I ripped this off from two tykes walking out of the theater in front of me, but I figure if a couple of kindergartners were so caught up in the film that they were already espousing the metaphysical underpinnings of "Horton Hears a Who," they wouldn't mind me sneaking it into the public domain.

Then again, many of Dr. Seuss's books are works of simple, existential genius, so anyone expecting CGI slapstick or simply superficial pap apparently has never eaten green eggs and ham.

Pity.

The good news about "Horton Hears a Who" is that, if you've begrudgingly fidgeted through Hollywood's liveaction Seuss fare, i.e., Mike Myers in "The Cat in the Hat" or Jim Carrey in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," you'll be relieved to know that Horton is entirely animated. I'm not saying that Myers or Carrey did bad jobs (well, maybe), but rather that I consider it impossible to translate Dr. Seuss' genius to a liveaction, and therefore even remotely realistic, feature film.

However, I will mention the Theodore Geiselscripted, undeniably hallucinogenic and utterly bizarre musical, "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T," which is one of my favorite films in the Hallucinogenic and Bizarre Musical category. Little seen and, I suspect, massively misunderstood (by society, in general, back in 1953), the film did prove that Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) not only understood children and their nightmares but dared to dip into their parents' inebriations as well.

Being said, I'm not certain that the stuff of Dr. Seuss is really meant to be G-rated (as is "Horton") in the hands of savvy filmmakers. There's a subliminally trippy, metaphysical undercurrent to the man's work- an almost Lewis Carroll ("Alice in Wonderland") and L. Frank Baum ("The Wizard of Oz") kinship that permeates those superficial fictive antics that most kids obliviously adore.

The story concerns a carefree elephant, Horton, who discovers a nearly invisible speck of dust that he believes contains an unseen world of people, named "Whos." But since nobody else in the jungle can hear all those tiny voices, his fellow animals not only berate the gentle Horton but plan to exterminate his newfound, friendly speck of dust in a pot of boiling "beezlenut stew." Horton is convinced of their presence, however, and tells us more than once that "a person is a person, no matter how small."

Whether older viewers choose to interpret such as smallness of mind and smallness of spirit, or instead as the theoretically dizzying possibility that we humans live in an endless multiverse- our own universe's concept of "smallest" being another universe's "largest"- well, those concepts remain in the eye of the beholder.

Still, it seems that directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino have chosen to keep the subliminal message very, very feather-light. "Horton" the movie remains a blissful, jovial, ultra-kid-friendly flick.

Please realize that such implied weightlessness is hardly a grumble, simply an observation. And while the movie isn't that much more complex than the original book, filling nearly 90 minutes of screen time from an illustrated children's fable of 30-plus pages is probably more difficult than it appears. Yes, some of Dr. Seuss' faithful might be upset that new characters and minor subplots are introduced, but the film appears to take great pains not to stray far from the original premise.

Younger children (I'd say 5or 6-year-olds and up) will likely be thrilled by the animation; teens- except those hard-core, high-energy "Transformer" types- should be additionally transfixed by numerous attempts at adult innuendo. Adults might actually ponder, believe it or not, the nature of the universe or, like the youngsters and me, just adore the animation.

Blue Sky Studios' previous effort was "Robots"- a film I enjoyed more than most critics. I suspect "Horton Hears a Who" will have its detractors too, but most of us should find the effort pleasing and possibly illuminating. These days, that makes for one heckuva film.