Dr Seuss is hardly the easiest of children’s authors to adapt. Most famous for writing in nonsense rhyme about bizarre creatures doing even more bizarre things, his cult status is little wonder. The Cat in the Hat? How the Grinch Stole Christmas? Certainly oddball, and among the most popular children’s books of the past half century.

Sadly, however, they also made for truly awful, chaotic children’s films – the first starring Mike Myers in unconvincing make-up; the second Jim Carrey in more of the same.

Nonetheless, despite being decidedly more traditional than either The Cat in the Hat or How the Grinch Stole Christmas, this film adaptation of Horton Hears a Who! is the first big-screen Dr Seuss adaptation of recent years to be animated – surely the natural medium for animal-starring stories?


The thing about Dr Seuss’s books is that they’re simply too surreal to work as live action movies. The Cat in the Hat was, after all, written as an educational work for children learning to read, inspired by an article he had seen in Life magazine back in 1954.

Theodore Geisel – Seuss’s real name – had already written several works for children, popular for their distinctive illustrations, and found himself namechecked in the article as an example of what educators should aspire to. At once proud and inspired, he set himself the challenge of producing a book for young children with a total vocabulary of just 250 words, the better to help them learn to read. It was precisely this simplicity that created such memorably silly rhymes and shaped Seuss’s distinctive style for the next several decades.

Horton Hears a Who!, however, dates from before this magazine-inspired revelation. His tenth book, it was a sequel to 1940’s Horton Hatches the Egg, all about a kindly elephant duped into minding an egg for a bored bird who no longer wants to sit in her nest. While certainly absurdist, it was more in the vein of Rudyard Kipling’s slightly odd Just So Stories than the truly surreal later Dr Seuss books, providing a nice simple moral within a strange but simple plot.

Jim Carrey returns as the voice of Horton, with rising comic star Steve Carell as the mayor of Who-ville. At which point it’s probably worth pointing out that the “Who” of the title is a microscopic creature living on a microscopic planet, so small it can’t be seen. Only Horton, with his huge ears, is aware of its existence because, well… only he can hear them. As you’d expect, when the other animals spot Horton apparently talking to thin air and claiming to hear voices, they think he’s gone mad. And so it’s up to the Whos to try to save him – cue much hilarity.

Only, well… there isn’t that much hilarity. Because Horton Hears a Who is only 72 pages long, it hardly provides enough material for a feature-length film. Indeed, the much-loved 1970s TV version lasted for a little under half an hour, and even that felt a touch stretched at times. How on earth have they managed to pad it out enough to entertain for an hour and a half?

Well, it’s simple really – they’ve added all kinds of additional elements to the storyline, from attempts to blow up the Whos’ planet to a lengthy quest for Horton to transport them to a safe new home away from the dangers of the jungle.

The end result is something that will only really appeal to very young children. But while this may be a disappointment to Dr Seuss’s legion of adult fans, considering the fact that this was precisely his original target audience, it’s decidedly appropriate.


• Above: Horton hears voices no one else can.