In the fantastical valley of Nool, a genial elephant named Horton (Jim Carrey) is enjoying a bath in the local swimming hole when something quite unexpected and strange happens. As an insignificant dust mote floats by in the breeze, Horton suddenly hears a miniscule shriek emanating from it. Nonplussed at first, Horton then comes to believe that infinitesimal little creatures may actually inhabit the tiny speck. Thinking fast, Horton grabs a piece of clover and allows the speck to gently come to rest upon it. Despite the resigned reaction of Horton's fellow jungle inhabitants (notably the snooty Kangaroo, voiced by Carol Burnett) to his apparently bizarre fixation on what they cannot see or hear for themselves, Horton makes it his duty to be the clover's guardian from harm. And, it turns out, Horton is actually right...

For you see, within that must mote exists the microscopic town of Whoville, a bustling, fantastically eccentric metropolis presided over by a henpecked Mayor named Ned McDodd (Steve Carell), who has a loving wife (Amy Poehler), ninety-six daughters, and one sullen, withdrawn son, JoJo (eventually voiced, at a crucial narrative moment, by Jesse McCartney). Whoville has existed for ages, blithely unaware of how precarious it's existence is...until The Mayor suddenly hears the voice of Horton speaking to him (why he can hear Horton while no one else can is not adequately explained).

Naturally weirded-out by the implication that the welfare of his entire city -- if not universe -- is now in the hands (hooves? Whatever an elephant walks around on, anyway) of a titanic pink elephant in the sky, the Mayor at first tries to brush off Horton's voice as an auditory halucination...until Horton graphically displays his dominance over his universe, placing the clover with the dust mote upon it underneath the shade of a tree, turning day into night within a second's time span (and then back again, and so forth and so on). Now convinced, the Mayor asks Horton to help find a safe place for the clover to exist. Spotting a secluded cave atop the peak of Mt. Nool, Horton sets off on a quest to deliver the citizens of Whoville to the Promised Land, with the hearty promise "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant...an elephant's faithful, one-hundred percent".

Based on he classic children's novel by Theodore Geisel, aka "Dr. Seuss", Horton Hears A Who! has an irrefutable, metaphysical moral conundrum at it's core. The idea of one universe existing as a literal speck inside of another is an idea that science fiction and fantasy writers have played around with for decades. But in the hands of Dr. Seuss, it also exists as a quietly profound children's primer on the ideas of stick-to-it-iveness, mob mentality (the livid Kangaroo incites her fellow jungle dweller to rise up against Horton's absurd notions about an entire city that, to them, exists only within his fertile imagination) and the rights of all creatures to equal treatment ("A person's  a person, no matter how small").

Too bad that the good Doctor's sweet, affecting wisp of a narrative has here been bloated into an overstuffed, charmless, frenetically busy animated feature. Casting Jim Carrey in the role of Horton was a crucial mistake. Horton is stalwart, never gives up, and self-sacrificing to a fault, so of course they're going to cast a popular, maniacal comic actor who has rarely been truly warm in a role. Steve Carell, peerless at playing endearing nerds, fares better as the frazzled Mayor, but, he too, is forced to scream an awful lot in lieu of generating laughs through cleverness rather than volume.

What really sinks Horton, though, is it's "hip", sure-to-be-dated-within-three-months, pop culture-addled screenplay. The timeless appeal of Dr. Seuss' book is undermined consistently by lame references to Apocalypse Now, "WhoSpace", and a truly bizarre interlude wherein Horton imagines himself as Whoville's savior via a stylized, Japanese anime-inspired segment (replete with stilted, Bruce Lee-style dubbing). As pleased as I am to see any 2D animation these days, what in GOD'S name where the writers smoking when they concocted this scene?

That's not to mention all the other contemporary CGI animated feature cliches the film is saturated in...the butt jokes (at least no one farts), the "sassy", ohnoyoud'in't secretary character (amazingly not voiced by Wanda Sykes), and -- worst of all -- the "spontaneous" karaoke finale with the film's cast crooning along to an old pop standard on the soundtrack (for the record, this time it's REO Speedwagon's maddeningly over familiar ballad "I Just Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore"). This is the kind of thing that drives me nuts. While Toy Story 2 was probably the first CGI feature to do this (with a peppy, Robert Goulet rendition of "You Got A Friend In Me"), it was really Eddie Murphy's rendition of the Monkees' "I'm A Believer" at the end of Shrek that turned this idea into one of the most groan-worthy cliches in contemporary animated films. By this point, this kind of scene only works on the most base, Pavlovian level. If the movie that preceded this musical number had been better, it would have been more tolerable here, but whatever mild emotional catharsis and goodwill the film's climax had generated up to this point (and the film does have a brief section where it attains a sweetly touching glow) just vanishes with an audible "pop".

In the movie's favor is it's often achingly pretty visual style, which -- despite it's shiny, CG sheen -- evokes the simple, charming artwork of the book, and is filled with little visual details (particularly in the Hellzapoppin' audiovisual frenzy of Whoville) that are often more interesting than the foreground story. It's also nice to hear Burnett's tart, acerbic vocal delivery again in the role of Kangaroo.

That said, Horton would have worked better as a half-hour television special. Even at 86 minutes, the film is padded like crazy, and anyone over the age of five will likely find the film to be -- at best -- mildly diverting children's fare. While it's certainly no creative debacle on the level of the ghastly, live-action Grinch That Stole Christmas or The Cat In The Hat movies, in an unusually fine year for animated features, Horton has little to distinguish itself from superior 'toon fare. There's none of the aching loneliness of Wall*E or the kinetic kick of Kung Fu Panda or the old-school classicism of Bolt. Horton will make a fine DVD babysitter, but the adult viewer should have a magazine handy.

Presentation
Seeing as the film's primary pleasures are of the visual type, one would hope the transfer would be up to snuff, and this spectacularly crisp, colorful anamorphic widescreen presentation is a bath for the eyes (there's also a cropped, 1.33:1 version on the flip side of the disc), with razor-sharp fine details. The 5.1 English audio is equally good, with excellent use of the subwoofer (you will feel air getting displaced around you when Horton's feet thump to the ground). Unfortunately, this also means that the film's shrill voice work comes through clear as a bell. Yay...?

Extras
While I was impressed that 20th Century Fox provided the actual, finished DVD product instead of one of those horrible "screening copies", they also neglected to send the 2-disc special edition version of the title (cheap bastards), so extras on this one-disc platter are slim. An audio commentary during the feature has co-directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino dishing on the production, trying to hew as closely to the art style of Theodore Geisel as possible, and the many "controversial" pop-culture gags that litter the movie. They also reveal how Horton's pursuit of a nasty vulture who steals the clover up a mountainside was temp-tracked with "The Ecstasy Of Gold" from Ennio Morricone's soundtrack to The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, much to the chagrin of composer John Powell, who was forced to mimic the tempo of one of the more iconic pieces of music in film history. This is a fast-paced, engaging track that's probably more entertaining than the feature is was created to support. 

All-New Ice Age Short: Surviving Sid (8:00, presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen) features the sloth star of the Ice Age films (John Leguizamo, channeling Slyvester the Cat) acting as an inept troop leader for a gaggle of prehistoric campers, and inadvertently creating a familiar landmark in the process. Fairly amusing, but the biggest laughs are delivered by the Scrat (whose squeals and grunts are provided by Blue Sky head honcho Chris Wedge) in a brief cameo.

The remainder of the extras on this one-disc set are a set of Previews for Angel Wars: The Messengers (0:43), Dr. Doolittle: A Tinseltown Tale (0:50), Elephant Tales (1:09) and the obligatory Ice Age 3: Rise Of The Dinosaurs (1:54), which -- naturally -- chronicles the latest chapter of the Scrat's endless quest for that elusive acorn (and which packs more giggles into two minutes than Horton Hears A Who! generates in eighty-six).

Bottom Line
At the story's climax, when the attempts of the citizens of Whoville to make enough noise to let the angry mob threatening Horton know of their existence is lost in the hubbub, it's an apt metaphor for how the simple, elegant charm of Dr. Seuss' original tale is crushed underneath a deafening cacophony of blaring Laff Riot slapstick and over emphatic vocal performances. Kids wont mind, but the adult viewer will likely find their attention wandering more than once during the film's running time.