Chris Renaud
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Connections, in both directions
Not only are these people unpleasant for the most part, but the new aspects of the story are forced, frenetic and so far from the gentle but pointed original that the film's musical riff from the "Mission: Impossible" theme does not sound out of place.
The movie, which also benefits from the straightforward agenda of the villainous air salesman Mr. O’Hare (Rob Riggle), would be even cleaner without some of its comedic lunges—like Ted’s mom (Jenny Slate) dancing to a tree’s disco ball or a group of fish singing the “Mission: Impossible” theme song.
There are a few pleasures to be had here, beginning with those charming fish (their rendition of the "Mission Impossible" theme is a highlight).
The fish who inhabit the forrest can’t just walk around on their fins; they have to do a Mission: Impossible spoof as well.
When the Lorax and some animals sneak into the Once-ler's house late at night, we hear the "Mission: Impossible" music.
The gorgeous and glorious new film of this fable from Universal’s “Despicable Me” team turns a somewhat gloomy, cautionary tale into a 3D musical, with catchy tunes and gags borrowed from every film from “Toy Story” and “The Truman Show” to “Babe.”
Thneedville is a futuristic metropolis not unlike the sheltered environment of “The Truman Show.”
Thneedville feels like an animated version of the world inhabited by Jim Carrey in The Truman Show.
Finding Nemo (2003)
Directed by Andrew Stanton
influenced The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019)
Themes Characters
Even though it poaches some themes and narrative structure from yet another Pixar classic (“Finding Nemo”), at least this time around the filmmakers demonstrate an essential understanding of the deeper elements that make that film work.
As in Toy Story 2 , this twist is quickly untwisted; Max becomes a surrogate parent to the tyke, mimicking the pivot from fear to protectiveness from Monsters, Inc. and the nervous-dad tics of Finding Nemo .
I checked because I thought the author of the screenplay might have been Dory, the forgetful fish from Finding Nemo.
Max’s over-parenting plight is reflective of storylines in Finding Nemo and Inside Out, and his connection with Rooster calls to mind the down-home connection between Lightning McQueen and Doc Hudson in Cars.
There are the requisite film homages and references (“The Fugitive” an obvious go to, “Some Like It Hot” less so) to keep the adults happy, and the parkour-performing wiener dog is just pure fun.
“I’m a cat,” she replies acidly — to which Pops offers the wonderful final line from Some Like It Hot .
"Nobody's perfect," he shrugs, stealing a line from Some Like It Hot.
The animation is gorgeous to the eye, while the vocal work is excellent, with Hart probably having the most fun as the diminutive but militant, chatterbox rabbit (who, if the species matched, would be some distant but angrier relative to Eddie Murphy's Donkey from the "Shrek" movies).
Kevin Hart voices the precious-but-vicious little furball — another choice casting that’s solid, but not as unexpected as, say, Antonio Banderas playing Puss in Boots in the “Shrek” movies.
The singing and dancing reminded me of “Jesus Christ Superstar” more than anything else.
The Grinch (2018)
Directed by Yarrow Cheney
influenced by The Lorax (2012), Despicable Me 2 (2013), The Secret Life of Pets (2016)
Characters
The Lorax featured a soft, cuddly Danny DeVito-voiced version of the title character.
From the studio that produced the Despicable Me movies and 2012’s terrible The Lorax , The Grinch is the second film the highly profitable family animation studio has made based on Dr. Seuss’s adored text, and it’s the second time the story of the holiday-hating green grouch comes to the silver screen after 2000’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas .
It follows two prior Seuss-based animated films: 2008’s Horton Hears A Who and 2012’s The Lorax.
Marking the third Seuss adaptation by Chris Meledandri’s Illumination Entertainment after 2008’s Horton Hears a Who! and 2012’s The Lorax , the Universal release should generate plenty of family-friendly, pre-holiday cheer when it opens this weekend.
Like the 2012 adaptation of Seuss’ The Lorax, this iteration of The Grinch comes to us via Illumination Entertainment, those purveyors of the insufferable yellow creatures known as Minions.
Co-directed by Yarrow Cheney and Scott Mosier, this is the second Illumination filming of a Seuss tale after The Lorax , and it probably won’t be the last either given that Seuss died in 1991 and his surviving family have been making big money licensing his books for films and lucrative merchandise ever since.
In many ways, “Despicable Me 2” plays a lot like an “Ice Age” or “Madagascar” sequel.
They're funny, in a Madagascar penguins or Pizza Planet little green men sort of way, one-joke bit players whose appeal was underestimated before and overestimated now, former scene swipers presently having scenes and ad campaigns handed to them.
Like the penguins of Madagascar, the Minions are destined for their own film, as an end-credits audition sequence indicates.
Dreamworks’ Madagascar and Shrek series may be creatively exhausted, but Universal proves with Despicable Me 2 that Pixar’s animators aren’t the only ones capable of top-quality sequels.
Especially smart on Coffin and Renaud’s part is the extra screen time given to the Minions, who have taken over the penguins of Madagascar and Scrat from Ice Age as the best side characters in animated film today.
Because there is no reasonable motivation for Ted’s actions in leaving the Terry Gilliam’s Brazil-esque “sanctuary” of Thneedville on his quest to find a real-live-tree for Audrey -- unless you sincerely believe that teenaged boys are nothing but perpetual erections -- The Lorax must bend over backwards, in whatever ridiculous ways it deems necessary, in order to hold itself together.
Ted, inspired by Audrey's dreams for a better, realer place to live, the Once-ler's grim downfall of "Citizen Kane" proportions, and the Lorax's messages of empowerment and respect, hopes to change all that's gone wrong in Thneedville.
Soul feels like the first Pixar film where no one cared if the youngest could keep pace with the ideas as long as they ooh and aah at the Seussian sketch of its spiritual settings and cackle at the slapstick of a second act that, quite honestly, feels a small step above The Secret Life of Pets .
While the O’Hare character is somewhat reminiscent of Edna Mode in Pixar’s The Incredibles, Thneedville’s visual and thematic cues are similarly evocative of the twin worlds of WALL-E.
The boy has a name now, Ted, and he's voiced by Zac Efron; he journeys out to the wasteland home of the Once-Ler (Ed Helms), trying to impress a girl, Audrey (Taylor Swift), who wants to see a real-live tree - for Ted and Audrey and everyone else lives in the walled city of Thneedville, where everything is artificial, including the air, sold by the cunning entrepreneur Aloysius O'Hare (Rob Riggle), who looks like The Incredibles 's Edna Mode on drag king night.
He looks less like a Dr. Seuss character than Edna Mode from "The Incredibles."
Even those who appreciated former vice president Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” will find themselves squirming at just how blatantly the filmmakers stack the deck.
Like "An Inconvenient Truth" for the 12-and-under crowd, "Dr.
Max’s over-parenting plight is reflective of storylines in Finding Nemo and Inside Out, and his connection with Rooster calls to mind the down-home connection between Lightning McQueen and Doc Hudson in Cars.
As far as computer-animated adaptations of Dr. Seuss classics go, "The Lorax" is an altogether more confident rendering than 2008's " Horton Hears a Who! " Perhaps its moralistic themes are simply expansive enough to better lend themselves to feature length, or maybe director Chris Renaud (2010's " Despicable Me ") and screenwriters Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul (2011's " Hop ") are just working on a higher level.
And while I could never forgive this - if you plan to abuse Seuss, the least you can do is hew close to his original themes, like Lorax producer Christoper Meledandri did with his Horton Hears a Who! - and for that matter, the amount of Seussian language present in the film is negligible to the point of invisibility - it would be acceptable, at least, if the film were still a solid bit of entertainment; for after all, those bright colors are tremendously appealing.
Like Fox Animation’s 2008 Horton Hears A Who! , Illumination Entertainment’s musical feature The Lorax, helmed by Despicable Me co-director Chris Renaud and feature first-timer Kyle Balda, keeps that filler mild and simplistic.
Having previously blended the irreverent and the touching to rewarding effect in Despicable Me, director Chris Renaud and writers Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio (the pair previously got their Seuss on with Horton Hears a Who!) prove to be the right team for the job at hand.
The gorgeous and glorious new film of this fable from Universal’s “Despicable Me” team turns a somewhat gloomy, cautionary tale into a 3D musical, with catchy tunes and gags borrowed from every film from “Toy Story” and “The Truman Show” to “Babe.”
Minions (2015)
Directed by Kyle Balda
influenced by The Lorax (2012), The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019)
Visuals
"Minions," co-directed by French filmmaker Pierre Coffin (Minions creator) and "The Lorax" co-director Kyle Balda, feeds us a constant supply of slapstick violence and pop-tune references (during an escape scene, the Minions emerge from a manhole on Abbey Road just as the Fab Four walk on their heads).
The prospect of such minor, interchangeably one-note characters getting their very own movie didn't sound promising in concept, but in "Minions," returning helmer Pierre Coffin and co-director Kyle Balda (2012's " The Lorax ") have found an inventive way to use them to their strengths.
The Minions are once again impeccably voiced — with a mixture of Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian and nonsense — by co-director Pierre Coffin, working here with “The Lorax” co-director Kyle Balda from a script by Brian Lynch (“Hop”).
This film's villain, actually the world's first female super villain Scarlett Overkill, isn't very interesting and Sandra Bullock has nothing on Steve Carrell in comic vocal performance, but directors Kyle Balda ("The Lorax") and Pierre Coffin ("Despicable Me") and their animation team keep things lively with non stop, character driven, often subversive visual gags like the best silent screen comedies ("Minions isn't silent, but neither is it subtitled).
Balda previously co-directed The Lorax together with Chris Renaud, Coffin’s helming colleague on the first two Despicable films who here acts as an executive producer and also provides some of the voices.
Both Balda and Coffin are well-versed in the Illumination Entertainment approach to animation storytelling by now, having previously co-directed The Lorax and Despicable Me 1 & 2, respectively.
Certainly the film has scored no shortage of green-friendly merchandising tie-ins (look for Lorax-approved laundry detergent at a store near you), though as far as artistry goes, the result is closer to "FernGully: The Last Rainforest" on the eco-friendly toon scale than to Hayao Miyazaki or "Wall-E."
For its Blade Runner--like smogscapes alone, this retelling of the nightmare (well-anchored by Ed Helms's "Once-ler," a likably ambitious young man with a guitar) comes close to recommendable.
In “The Lorax,” the author of “Green Eggs and Ham,” “Horton Hears a Who” and “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” channeled environmental concerns into a cautionary fable about a reckless industrialist who creates a plasticized, polluted world without any trees.
The man who brightened my childhood, and my daughter’s, with his clever verse, fanciful drawings, and vivid imagination has been pummeled by such overblown productions as How the Grinch Stole Christmas and (even worse)The Cat in the Hat.
The result is solidly entertaining - not quite as good as Horton Hears a Who or How the Grinch Stole Christmas - but unquestionably better than The Cat in the Hat .