THE LORAX: Unless Someone Like You Cares a Whole Awful Lot, Nothing is Going to Get Better, It’s Not

The Lorax (2012) – Directed by Chris Renaud and Kyle Balda – Starring Zac Efron, Danny DeVito, Ed Helms, Taylor Swift, Rob Riggle, Betty White, Jenny Slate, Nasim Pedrad, and Stephen Tobolowksy.

THE LORAX is a so-so movie with a really great message. I’m surprised, given my environmental leanings, that I don’t like the movie a whole lot more, but while the film is wonderfully colorful and vibrant and while it’s got a great pro-environment message, it spends too much time with its human characters and not enough time with its titular character. The result is a film that starts off really strong and slowly gives away all of the positive karma the opening scenes create.

It begs the question: Why would a film called THE LORAX contain so little Lorax?

The Once-ler (Ed Helms) is a young man with big dreams and leaves his home to make his own way in the world. He makes his way to a valley full of Truffula Trees and cuts one down to make his “thneed,” which he intends to sell as a kind of all purpose cloth accessory. In cutting down the tree, the supernatural protector of the forest known as the Lorax (Danny DeVito) appears, and after some back and forth, makes the Once-ler promise to not cut any more trees down. The Once-ler, who seems like a decent enough fella, agrees, but then when the thneed becomes popular, the Once-ler bows to the pressure of his money-hungry family and starts chopping all the trees down. Eventually, the last tree falls and the environmental devastation causes all the animals of the forest to flee for (literally) greener pastures. With thneed production now over, the Once-ler’s family leaves him and he becomes a hermit.

Decades later, we’re introduced to Ted Wiggins (Zac Efron), a 12-year old kid living in the walled-in city of Thneedville in love with the older, high school-attending Audrey (Taylor Swift). Audrey lets Ted know that she wants to see a tree more than anything in the world, and so in a desperate attempt to impress her, he asks his mother (Jenny Slate) and grandmother (Betty White) if they know where he can find one. This leads to him leaving the city to find the Once-ler and hear his story in the hopes of finding a tree. By the end of his tale, the Once-ler has given Ted the last Truffula Tree seed and he runs back to town to plant it and make everyone come alive at the thought of having real, live trees in their midst again.

It’s a simple story told relatively well, but the problem with THE LORAX is that the Lorax and the forest creatures are the most interesting characters in the film, but it’s the mostly annoying Once-ler and the mostly okay Ted that get the bulk of the screen time. It makes narrative sense, of course, as we need the Once-ler to fall and Ted to rise to get the film’s message that the environment is worth saving, but just because something makes sense doesn’t mean it’s a great watch.

There’s a few songs in the film, too, but they’re mostly duds. The opening “Thneedville” number is pretty good. I’m a sucker for these city-wide sing-alongs and the number does a pretty good job of setting up the totally mechanical world of the namesake city. The closing “Let it Grow” is the same style of song, and the film manages to work some decent emotion out of the town’s environmental awakening. The main song in the middle of the film, however, is ridiculously dreadful. “How Bad Can I Be?” is completely soulless and lacking in any wit, charm, or (most important, for a song) catchiness.

What really dooms the film is its slide into mediocrity. At the start of the film, I’m digging on Ted’s quest to impress Audrey, the vibrant color contrast between the cold, white city, the dull greys of the post-apocalyptic landscape outside, and the bright Truffula Tree valley, and the Once-ler’s story. Ted’s relationship with his grandma is fun to watch, as is the Once-ler’s early relationship with the animals of the valley. By the time Ted has made an enemy out of Aloysius O’Hare (Rob Riggle), the diminutive mayor of Thneedville who’s made his fortune selling air in plastic bottles, and the Once-ler has felled his last tree, the film has lost its charm and fallen into a bland hodge-podge of other cinematic ideas.

And the biggest problem is that the Lorax himself goes away, which robs the film of the bright, humorous balance to the Once-ler giving himself over to the evils of industrialization. (Note that the film does not say that making money is evil – even the Lorax seemed okay with Once-ler making money with his thneeds so long as he was merely pruning the trees instead of chopping them down.)

It’s a shame. Given my love for the animated Horton Hears a Who!, I had high hopes for THE LORAX but the film ultimately fails to deliver anything more than a moderately appealing time. I love the look of the film but the narrative and the songs let the film down. I wanted more Lorax and Pipsqueak and less Granny on a motor scooter.

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And hey, if you like all ages stories, check out my kid’s novel ADVENTURES OF THE FIVE: THE COMING OF FROST. Available now in both paperback and for the Kindle.

21 JUMP STREET: Embrace Your Stereotypes

21 Jump Street (2012) – Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller – Starring Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Brie Larson, Dave Franco, Ellie Kemper, Rob Riggle, Ice Cube, Nick Offerman, Peter DeLuise, Holly Robinson Peete, and Johnny Depp.

There’s a lot going against 21 JUMP STREET – it stars Jonah Hill (who I honestly think I’d rather see doing quirky dramas like Moneyball instead of silly comedies) and Channing Tatum (who I never remember being intentionally funny before) in a comedic update of a TV show from the ’80s. Making things tougher on the film (though none of this is JUMP STREET’s fault), I was watching it in an old, semi-crowded theater on a crappy print. (It was the 10 PM show at the $3 casino cinema.) I’d heard good things about it, but I didn’t have high expectations.

Five minutes in, I was hooked.

21 JUMP STREET is an incredibly funny movie that does a smart thing – it tells a simple story very effectively, building most of the plot elements around the triangulation of Schmidt and Jenko’s job as police officers, the high school location of the their undercover investigation, and Schmidt and Jenko’s insecurities.

Let me say that again in case you skimmed over it – 21 JUMP STREET is an incredibly funny movie, and I come away from this film as impressed with Jonah Hill as I did after Moneyball. Hill co-wrote JUMP STREET with Michael Bacall (who also co-wrote the excellent Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) and they keep their script focused and driven, making the humor serve the story instead of simply stringing together a bunch of funny bits. Hill also wisely casts himself in the straighter role, allowing Tatum to handle more of the outrageous comedy.

Hill and Tatum make an interesting duo – they have the typical cinematic tall guy and fat guy bit look down, but unlike Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Spade and Farley, Hill and Tatum largely invert the stereotype, with the fat one being the practical one and the skinny one being the dummy. (And, yeah, I hate to use such base terms and paint with such a broad brush, but this is a pretty standard comedic configuration.) It works, too, because Hill is very good at playing a the put-upon guy who’s personal pain serves as the basis for the film’s comedic debasement of him, and Tatum is very good as the popular guy who’s used to doing the debasing.

Schmidt and Jenko (Hill and Tatum) went to high school together, but were on opposite sides of the cool line. Neither one of them got to go to the prom – Schmidt because no one would go with him and Jenko because his poor grades got him barred.

Years later, they unwittingly enroll in the police academy at the same. “Hey, Not-So-Slim Shady!” Jenko calls out, a reference to Schmidt’s Eminem-inspired look in high school. Very quickly, they realize they can help each other since Schmidt isn’t so good with the physical (being overweight) and Jenko isn’t so good with the tests (being dumb). Before we know it, they’ve both passed the Academy and been made partners.

Impressively, JUMP STREET moves through all of this set-up efficiently. The two guys are bike cops and they screw up a bust and they get kicked over into the Jump Street program, where they meet Captain Dickson (Ice Cube) at an abandoned church that serves as the program’s headquarters. Dickson sends them back to high school, but because Jenko can’t remember his cover identity, he ends up having to live as the science nerd and Schmidt gets enrolled in drama. It’s another smart twist, having these two guys live high school over, but this time from the other’s point of view.

Not only is the script smart, but the casting and acting is top notch. Ice Cube totally embraces the “angry black captain” stereotype, and Hill and Bacall’s script uses these stereotypes to its benefit, having Dickson address them directly. “Yeah, I’m black!” he shouts at them from the pulpit. “I worked hard to get where I am, and yes, sometimes I get angry!” After dressing Schmidt and Jenko down over their types, he tells them to “embrace your stereotypes!”

Which they then almost immediately screw up and have to live life as the other one.

There’s plenty of stupid humor here – the guys end up getting tricked into using drugs, they purposely throw a huge party at Schmidt’s parent’s house, the bad guy ends up getting his dick blown off, which he then tries to pick up with his mouth – but there’s also clever humor, too, like when Schmidt starts hitting on a high school girl (they make a point to tell you she’s 18), but does it anachronistically, calling her instead of texting her.

In a move the film didn’t have to make, but did, 21 JUMP STREET is set in the same continuity as the TV show – it’s just 25 years later and everything’s seen through a comedic lens. Johnny Depp, Peter DeLuise, and Holly Robinson Peete all return to reprise their roles from the TV show, and it’s a nice touch that probably 90% of the people in the theater completely missed. Maybe they knew Depp used to be in the show, but it’s not like DeLuise and Peete’s involvement got the crowd hootering and hollering in approval. Even “Jenko” is a shout-out to the original captain of the Jump Street program, who only lasted

JUMP STREET was directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the directing duo who made the excellent Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and they display a wonderful gift for balancing the comedic with the dramatic.

I saw 21 JUMP STREET Saturday night and then went to a different theater to see Men in Black 3 on Monday (review coming shortly), and it’s not even close as to which was the better movie. I laughed more times and with greater intensity in the first 15-20 minutes of JUMP STREET than I did in the entire length of MIB3. At the end of JUMP STREET, they tease a set-up for a sequel where Schmidt and Jenko go to college, and I’m honestly looking forward to seeing it.