Horton Hears a Who! (film)

Horton Hears a Who! (also known as Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!) is a 2008 American computer animated adventure comedy film based on the book of the same name by Dr. Seuss, produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. Directed by Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino in their directorial debuts, the film's screenplay was written by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio, and features the voices of Jim Carrey and Steve Carell as Horton the Elephant and Mayor Ned McDodd, respectively, alongside Carol Burnett, Will Arnett, Seth Rogen, Isla Fisher, and Amy Poehler. John Powell composed the film's music.

The film was released theatrically on March 14, 2008, and grossed $297 million on a budget of $85 million. Horton Hears a Who! was the third Dr. Seuss feature film adaptation, the first adaptation to be fully animated, and the second Dr. Seuss film starring Jim Carrey after How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000).

Plot
A dust speck is dislodged from its obscure place and sent adrift through the Jungle of Nool. At the same time, Horton the Elephant, the jungle's eccentric nature teacher, takes a dip in the pool. The dust speck floats past him in the air, and he hears a tiny yelp coming from it. Believing that an entire society of microscopic creatures are living on that speck, he gives chase to it before placing it on top of a clover. Horton finds out the speck harbors the city of Whoville and its inhabitants, the Whos, led by Mayor Ned McDodd, whose family includes his wife Sally, 96 daughters whose names all begin with the letter H, and one teenage son named JoJo. Despite being the oldest child and next in line for the mayoral position, JoJo doesn't want to be the next mayor, and because he is so scared of disappointing his father, he never talks. Once Horton begins carrying the speck with him, the city starts experiencing strange phenomena (earthquakes and changes in the weather), and the Mayor finds his attempts to caution Whoville challenged by the Town Council, led by the opportunistic yet condescending Chairman.

After he makes contact with Horton, the Mayor finds out from Dr. Mary Lou LaRue that Whoville will be destroyed if Horton does not find a "safer, more stable home". With the help of his best friend Morton, Horton decides to place the speck atop Mt. Nool, the safest place in the jungle. The head of the jungle, the Sour Kangaroo, demands numerous times that Horton give up the speck for overshadowing her authority, but Horton refuses. Also taking force toward Horton are the Wickersham Brothers, a group of monkeys who like to cause anybody havoc and misery. Eventually, the Kangaroo enlists a sinister vulture named Vlad Vladikoff to get rid of the speck by force.

After a few failed attempts, Vlad manages to steal the clover away from Horton and drops it into a massive field of identical pink clovers, causing an apocalyptic tremor in Whoville. After unsuccessfully picking 2,999,999 clovers, Horton eventually recovers the clover (exactly the 3,000,000th clover). The Kangaroo eventually finds out, thanks to Mrs. Quilligan, that Horton still has the speck, and she rallies the jungle community into fighting Horton, saying that his goal will lead to anarchy. Upon cornering him, the Kangaroo offers Horton a final chance to renounce Whoville's existence. Horton refuses and, despite the heartfelt speech that he gives, the Kangaroo orders the animals to rope and cage him, and to have the speck and Whoville destroyed in a pot of beezlenut oil. The Mayor enlists all of his people to make noise by shouting "We are here!", as well as playing a variety of instruments, so that all the animals may hear them, assisted by JoJo's "Symphonophone", an invention which creates a huge musical contribution and reveals that JoJo's "true" passion is music, but still fails to penetrate the surface of the speck.

The Kangaroo snatches the clover from Horton and drops it in the pot. Meanwhile, JoJo grabs the horn used to project Horton's voice, runs up the highest tower, and screams "YOPP!", breaking through the sound barrier just seconds before the speck hits the oil. Rudy, the Kangaroo's son, grabs the clover and proclaims he can hear it, and the other animals of Nool notice that they can hear it too. Despite his mother's objections, Rudy returns the clover to Horton. Realizing the truth about the Whos' existence, the animals isolate the Kangaroo for tricking them. While being praised for his integrity by his neighbors, Horton even forgives the devastated Kangaroo, and she befriends him with a makeshift umbrella for Whoville. The film ends with the people of Whoville and the animals of Nool gathering to recite the chorus from "Can't Fight This Feeling", with the narrator revealing that the Jungle of Nool (and Earth as a whole) is just one speck, like Whoville, among numerous others, floating in outer space.

Voice cast

 * Jim Carrey as Horton, an outgoing, eccentric, big-hearted, loving, sweet, and thoughtful elephant and teacher in the Jungle of Nool. Horton has no tusks, lives by himself and possesses acute hearing abilities.
 * Steve Carell as Mayor Ned McDodd, the mayor of Whoville. He has 96 daughters, 1 son named JoJo and a wife named Sally.
 * Carol Burnett as Sour Kangaroo, an egomaniacal kangaroo who mistrusts Horton's inquisitive nature as a threat to her legal authority over Nool.
 * Will Arnett as Vlad Vladikoff, a scary, savage, eccentric Russian-accented vulture hired by the Sour Kangaroo to steal Horton's clover.
 * Seth Rogen as Morton, a mouse who is Horton's best friend in the Jungle of Nool.
 * Dan Fogler as The Chairman, a councilman dedicated to Whoville tradition and mistrustful of Mayor McDodd.
 * Fogler also voices Yummo Wickersham, the leader of the Wickersham ape tribe.
 * Isla Fisher as Dr. Mary Lou LaRue, a professor at Who U.
 * Jonah Hill as Tommy, a tiger and one of Horton's students.
 * Amy Poehler as Sally O'Malley, Mayor McDodd's wife and mother to Jojo and her 96 daughters.
 * Jaime Pressly as Mrs. Quilligan, a bird and Jessica's mother.
 * Charles Osgood as The Narrator
 * Jesse McCartney as JoJo McDodd, Mayor McDodd's quiet son.
 * Josh Flitter as Rudy Kangaroo, Sour Kangaroo's son.
 * Niecy Nash as Miss Yelp, Mayor McDodd's assistant.
 * Laura Ortiz as Jessica Quilligan, a bird, Mrs. Quilligan's daughter and one of Horton's students.
 * Joey King as Katie, a cute, but eccentric little baby yak.
 * Bill Farmer as Willie, a tiger and Tommy's dad.
 * Heather Goldenhersh as a Who Girl
 * Marshall Efron and Tim Nordquist as the Wickersham Guards.

Production
In March 2005, as Blue Sky Studios was completing Robots, the studio started courting Dr. Seuss' widow Audrey Geisel on getting the adaptation rights for Horton Hears a Who!. The art director for Robots, Steve Martino, along with story consultant and additional scene director Jimmy Hayward, created a model of protagonist Horton and some animation tests to showcase their design ideas to Geisel, who eventually agreed on "a seven-figure deal" for both the book and its predecessor Horton Hatches the Egg. Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio were then hired to write the script, to be directed by Hayward and Martino with a set release date of 2008.

Geisel was credited as a supervising producer and watched production up close, and also gave the directors full access to her late husband's archives, and thus they investigated on his original sketches, 3-D sculptures, work done for The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T and even memos Dr. Seuss traded with Chuck Jones during the production of the Grinch TV special. For references in doing the character animation, along with footage of the voice actors performing their lines, the Blue Sky animators recorded themselves performing the script in an "acting room" to see what of their body language could translate well into the film.

To make Horton different from the mammoths Blue Sky worked with in the Ice Age series, he would at times walk on two legs, in a way that it looked like "a fat man in an elephant suit". While the design had a major difference from the original book, with a bigger mouth to allow for wider facial expressions like those of Jim Carrey, as the directors noticed Horton's design in the book varied according to his emotion, the 3D wireframe tried to allow for the same effects.

Soundtrack
The original score for the film's soundtrack album was composed by John Powell. A soundtrack consisting of the film's score was released on March 25, 2008 by Varèse Sarabande. Near the end of the picture, the cast comes together and sings the song, "Can't Fight This Feeling" by REO Speedwagon.

Others songs featured in the film are:

Critical reception
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 79% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 132 reviews. The site's consensus reads, "Horton Hears A Who! is both whimsical and heartwarming, and is the rare Dr. Seuss adaptation that stays true to the spirit of the source material." Another review aggregator, Metacritic, calculated a score of 71 out of 100 based on 31 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews." According to CinemaScore, the film version rated an "A−" on an "A+" to "F" scale.

Box office
Horton Hears a Who! grossed a total of $297 million on a $85 million budget. $155 million came from the United States and Canada, and $143 million from other territories.

In its opening weekend, the film grossed $45 million in 3,954 theaters, averaging $11,384 per theater in the United States and Canada, and ranking #1 at the box office.

The film previously had the fourth-largest opening weekend in March, behind Ice Age, Ice Age: The Meltdown and 300, and as of September 2012, it ranks on the 15th place. In the United States and Canada, Horton Hears a Who! was also the #1 film its second weekend of release, grossing $25 million over the Easter frame, in 3,961 theaters and averaging $6,208 per venue. It dropped to #2 in its third weekend grossing $17.8 million in 3,826 theaters and averaging $4,637 per venue.

Interpretations
Horton Hears a Who!, like other Dr. Seuss creations, contains layered subtexts and messages. A major theme regards learning about universal values between vastly different places and people, as shown by the quote "A person's a person, no matter how small". This is employed on many levels, primarily with Horton hearing a world in a speck, while also appearing with the Mayor's relationship with his son, and Sour Kangaroo learning the truth about the speck.

The movie characters display traditional gender roles, according to NPR host Peter Sagal:

"In a new subplot added by the filmmakers, the mayor of Whoville has 96 daughters. He has one son. Guess who gets all his attention? Guess who saves the day?"

Home media release
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! was released on DVD and Blu-ray on December 9, 2008. Three versions of the DVD are available: a single-disc edition, a 2-disc special edition, and a gift set packaged with a Horton plush.

A Blu-ray combo pack with a DVD and digital copy was released on October 11, 2011. The home media included an Ice Age-related short film, Surviving Sid.

In the United States, the film earned $77,630,768 from DVD sales and $180,434 from Blu-ray sales for a total of $77,811,202 in video sales.