I recently went to see the movie version of The Lorax, a classic Dr. Suess story. I read this story many times and was deeply affected by it. There is something about seeing a gray landscape barren of trees from which a small creature flees due to the hopelessness of the situation.
The movie was fairly accurate to the book, though there were a few extra plot lines such as the story of the boy who is told the story of the Lorax and tries to return trees to the land. I really enjoyed this movie, especially because I wasn’t aware that there were extremely entertaining musical numbers in it. The story is very sad because the storyteller, the Onceler, cuts down all the trees and ends up making the natural creatures of the land have to leave. At this point the Lorax leaves because he could not stop the Onceler and save the trees. All the Lorax leaves is a circle of stones on which is engraved the world “unless”. This is where the book leaves off, but the movie is much happier. In the movie the boy takes the seed of the last tree and plants it, at the same time restarting the entire forest.
This movie actually made me cry (children’s movies often do that to me) because of all the horrible things that happened to the environment because of man’s selfishness. The movie has clear environmental and anti-big business sentiments, but I don’t really see a problem with this. I don’t think there is anything wrong with children learning to preserve what resources we have and learning not to stomp over everything and everyone to get what they want.
I highly recommend this movie for adults and children alike because it has a really good message. I would give it a 4/5 because I really enjoyed it.
