An elephant stumbles across a speck of dust in which apparently a whole world is hidden. He goes at great lengths in order to protect the speck and the world from being boiled by a nasty kangaroo sceptic.
I think it is difficult to assess what this film means to an American audience who grew up with Dr Seuss books and knows the story with nostalgic intensity. If you see it without that history, the story appears to be incredibly thin, the characters all pretty non-edgy and the – in terms of the way it has been produced for the screen – the animation very very not interesting, none of the characters particularly original, cute, nasty or any adjective. I hope this works for the little ones. For the slightly elderly there is a short sequence reminiscent of Japanese manga comic books and films (without context, though), and a short reference to Apocaplypse Now, and that’s about it. Uninspired and way too family friendly in the word’s worst connotation.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0451079/
Salon.com review: http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2008/03/14/horton/index.html?CP=IMD
thomas4cinema 