Horton Hears a What?!?

In discussing his beloved holiday special, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the late animation legend Chuck Jones admitted that, in order to pad Dr. Seuss's story out to a half-hour running time on network television, he had to add plenty of "business"--comic bits, extra characters and action sequences to take a story that, even if read aloud slowly and with funny voices, only takes about ten minutes to tell.

Theodor Geisel himself must have agreed with this approach, as none of the TV specials produced from his work in his lifetime ran past the 30 minute mark, and a few actually presented two stories instead of just one, thus coming much closer to being animated extensions of his original works rather than rewrites/expansions of them.

But Geisel died in 1991, and his estate has let others take his work and stretch it like taffy--often past the breaking point.

I've only seen a few minutes of Ron Howard's big-screen adaptation of Grinch, mostly because a few minutes is all I can take before body-quaking convulsions compel me to change the channel. (What, you think I'd rent that thing?) None of what I've seen feels anything like geisel's work--it looks like all business, no Seuss. And don't even ask me about The Cat in the Hat starring Mike Myers--the previews alone were enough to trigger a gran mal.

So what, then, do you think my reaction was to seeing the poster for Horton Hears a Who! in my neighborhood theater? If you guessed "a rash, at the very least," then you know me pretty damn well.

An 86-minute adaptation of a 10-minute story doesn't sound remotely promising to me. Throw in the presence of Jim Carrey (even if it's just his voice), and you've got the closet thing to an iron-clad guarantee that I won't be going anywhere near it.

Except...the reviews thus far have been, well, good. Not spectacular or terrific or "Oh my god, it's a classic!" But...good.

Is it case of lowered expectations? Example: When I saw Sam Raimi's The Gift years ago, I was impressed with Keanu Reeves's performance--until a friend who went with me asked if his performance was actually good, or if it was just better than I had expected it to be? I didn't know how to answer that one. So the question with Horton, then, is this: Is it actually good, or just good in comparison with Grinch and Cat in the Hat?

Somebody else will have to be brave enough to answer that question for me.