Film Review | The Lorax

Nobody likes to be preached at, even if the sermon in question is delivered by an adorable orange creature with an impressive moustache, and whose underlying message - be nice to nature - is hard to fault.

Particularly when it's aimed at younger children, who are bound to need that kind of advice in the future far more urgently than any of us ever will. 

But despite the non-film-friendly nature of Dr Seuss's beloved pro-environmental picturebook of the same name, the team behind the highly endearing and successful Despicable Me have decided to plough on ahead with their adaptation of the wafer-thin narrative of The Lorax... in the end creating something that is pretty to watch and loaded with good intentions but that doesn't quite stand on its own two feet as a story.

And story is always going to be something of a challenge when adapting Seuss's books, because they tend to be built on a cocktail of random word play, surreal imagery, with a few didactic messages thrown in.

To band-aid this problem, we launch into the world of the Lorax (voiced by Danny de Vito) through a tacked-on story of a young boy, Ted (Zac Efron) who escapes the plastic utopia he lives in with his mother (Jenny Slate) and grandmother (Betty White) to go in search of a real tree - they're an extinct concept where he comes from - in order to impress a girl-next-door crush Audrey (Taylor Swift).

But little does the boy know that what lies behind his pristine home city - a plastic enclosure sealed off from what's left of real nature by the sinister and enterprising Mr O'Hare (Rob Riggle), who has now even managed to sell bottled air - is guarded by a shadowy figure known as the Once-ler (Ed Helms), who only lets the boy through after he's told him the story of how what was once a lush land populated by a wonderful army of strange creatures and vegetation is now a barren landscape... and how it's all his fault.

Despite its slow descent into post-industrial grimness, there's a lot of fun to be had in the Once-ler's back story.

Cute characters abound: from bears - both slow and scrappy - to singing fish and wonderfully oblivious ducks. As with Despicable Me's yellow minions (who are now getting their own spin-off adventure) the strength mostly lies in the supporting critters. Animated with a crisp palette of swirling colours and designs to match Dr Seuss's own inimitable pen, they keep the lumbering thing fun for the whole family.

But it's difficult to mask just how much of an unwieldy beast this adaptation really is. Stretching the original story to feature-film length is already a feat, but when the environmental message remains unsubtle as ever, the songs are uninspiring (some of them feel as if they're being made up on the spot), and when any immediacy to the story is sapped away by our protagonist essentially being made to sit down and listen to a big flashback, it moves the well-meaning feature far, far away from the heights scaled by even the least impressive of Pixar features.

Still, anything that respects even the shadow of the zanily inventive Seuss (who also gave us The Grinch) is bound to be a quirky joy in parts, and The Lorax, for all its bumpy faults, is often a treat as much as it's a missed opportunity.

Might not be worth the exorbitant cinema tickets - especially now that 3D is being foisted upon us at nearly every turn - but it's bound to become a cosy DVD rental option, especially among environmentally-concerned parents.