Horton Hears a Who!

As Abbott and Costello might have put it: Who’s on first? They certainly are.

Those Whos from Whoville are back on the big screen, littler than ever, in Horton Hears a Who!, the third and best so far of the Dr. Seuss movie adaptations.

From a cinematic standpoint, given the first two efforts, Dr. Seuss could use some juice. And now he’s got it.

2000’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas was a respectable adaptation. 2003’s The Cat in the Hat, with Mike Myers, was anything but, a dreadful dud, a gnat that went splat. Both were live action.

Horton Hears a Who! is an animated adventure, a CG enterprise that smartly and skillfully captures the gently absurdist Seussian combo of silliness and philosophy.

The book was published in 1954, the second Seuss work to feature Horton the elephant (the first was Horton Hatches the Egg), and was turned into a half-hour television special in 1970 by director Chuck Jones with Hans Conreid as the voice of Horton.

Aimed at children between, say, four and eight, it was a characteristically comical introduction to the vaguely metaphysical concept of — not to get too heavy here — unseen life and the fundamental nature of existence.

Horton is a lovable pachyderm with an innate sense of kindness, considerateness, and respect for other creatures. Jim Carrey, who earlier played the Grinch, gives voice to Horton, who hears a cry for help coming from a speck of dust. He can’t really see anybody on the speck, but with those big ears, he can hear quite well. So he takes it on faith that there are tiny creatures living in there who need help.

And, it turns out, that speck is actually a tiny planet, the home of Whoville, where the infinitesimal Whos live.

Steve Carell is the tiny Who mayor, creating a bit of noise as he attempts to issue a global warning to the ever-optimistic residents of microscopic Whoville that they are in danger.

Horton takes it upon himself to protect the life-bearing speck and its inhabitants, for which he is ridiculed by his neighbors and friends in the jungle who can’t see Whoville or the Whos and thus don’t believe that they actually exist.

Just as the rest of Whoville’s population, who see their mayor as a crazed alarmist, refuse to believe that any danger to their home planet exists.

As narrator Charles Osgood explains, neither Horton nor the mayor is believed by anybody, but each must struggle to convince everyone around him that what they’re claiming is the case.

Debuting co-directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino bring a colorful vibrancy to the animation, and carefully translate the source material into a feature film by carefully editing and embellishing it, but preserving the gentle Seussical spirit and essence.

The narrative by College Road Trip screenwriters Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul smoothly caroms back and forth between the two worlds — or parallel universes, or two levels of reality, or however you wish to look at it — without being overloaded in a way that would lose the hold on the young audience.

Lots of other celebrity voices contribute — Carol Burnett, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Isla Fisher, Dane Cook, Jaime Pressly, and Dan Fogler — comprising a Seuss-on-the-loose ensemble that serves the piece with flair.

Chaperones in attendance will find the craftsmanship on display impressive, and young and old alike will enjoy the earned laughs, especially the sight gags. Yep, Horton here’s a hoot.

So we’ll take on faith 3 stars out of 4 for the delightful full-length screen version of Horton Hears a Who! In Seussian terms:

A person’s a person, no matter how small,
A movie’s a movie, and this one stands tall.