current: Horton Hears a Who [85/100]

I was so ready not to like this latest big-screen adaptation of Dr. Seuss, the last two were so bad, and Horton is a story as delicate as the speck Whoville populates. One smart move on the part of the folks at Blue Sky Studios [Ice Age] was to preserve much of Ted Geisel's loopy verse, and to pick the best possible voiceover narrator, Charles Osgood, whose appreciation of language serves the story and the movie well. Another was to keep voice stars Jim Carrey [especially] and Steve Carrell in character and in check, avoiding shtick such as Robin Williams' Genie in Alladin. The combination of digital CGI animation with more traditional two-dimensional art is pretty eye-popping [though definitely a sign of cultural ADD], the whole movie looks great. Finally, Carol Burnett's upstanding mama kangaroo with control issues is just the sort of heavy Dr. Seuss warned kids about -- a mammal who knows what's best for other mammals. Geisel's politics were left of center, and he reportedly took exception to the use of Horton's moral ["A person's a person, no matter how small"] by pro-lifers. As a vertically challenged person myself, I'll take Horton over Randy Newman's "Short People" any day.