MOVIE REVIEW: The Lorax — Turns Out, Environmentalism Can Be Fun

If this movie is the hit I think it will be, then it's another indication that a new liberal generation is coming of age, in the same way that the movies of the late 70s and 80s showcased the new generation of children who were more conservative than their parents.

The stakes are high for The Lorax, since it's based on a book that has been read and loved by generations of children, which itself is surprising — considering its overall gloominess and unconventional ending. It may be a book for the young, but there's nothing sugarcoated or condescending about it.

The movie certainly keeps to that spirit. It picks up after the book ends, in the town of Thneed-Ville, whose citizens exist in a blissful state of ignorance in a place so artificial that both a beach and a ski area coexist side by side. No remnant of the natural world remains: the trees are all plastic, and there's not even a speck of dirt to be seen.

Thneed-Ville is ruled over by Mayor O'Hare (Rob Riggle), a wealthy businessman who made his fortune selling air — and, thereby, has a vested interest in the status quo, seeing as how people will be willing to pay for what he's selling as long as nothing changes. He keeps the town carefully isolated from the environmental devastation outside with his wall surrounding the town and cameras that monitor the citizens.

Everything changes when a young boy named Ted decides to travel outside the town to find a Truffula Tree to impress his crush, a teenager named Audrey (Taylor Swift). Once outside the town, he soon finds the reclusive Once-ler, who tells Ted how the idealistic young man he once was became corrupted by success, causing him to destroy the beauty of his surroundings to meet the demand for his invention, despite the frantic objections and warnings of The Lorax (Danny DeVito), the guardian of the forest. Once all the resources are used up, the Once-ler loses everything, leading to the rise of O'Hare and the creation of Thneed-Ville.

The Once-ler then gives Ted the last Truffula Seed and charges him to plant the seed so the forest can eventually be reborn. So, it's up to Ted, aided by Audrey and his grandmother, a hilarious Betty White, to get the town's citizens to care about and appreciate nature again. Unfortunately, O'Hare discovers the plan, and intends to make sure that things stay as they are.

The movie could have easily slipped into preachiness and self-righteousness, but surprisingly avoids it, which is all the more amazing in a film about environmentalism. The casting is wonderful and spot-on, the musical numbers are enjoyable (particularly the one where the Once-ler justifies his actions, offering an amusing satire of so many justifications you hear on Fox News), and the forest's inhabitants are cute without being cloying. Like the recent Muppet film, the movie uses kid-friendly fare as an opportunity for fun, not a limitation, where both the kids and the parents walk out smiling.

REVIEWER RATING: A