Movie Review: Horton Hears a Who!

The picture book version of Horton Hears a Who! By Dr. Seuss is the story of Horton the elephant and the people of a very small town called “Whoville”. On the 15th of May Horton is splashing around in a pool when he hears a “yelp for help” coming from a small speck of dust. Horton soon realizes that there are a whole bunch of small people called “Whos” living on this speck of dust. Horton moves the speck of dust onto a clover, and decides to protect these small people. A kangaroo and her baby come over and make fun of Horton, because they can’t hear the “Whos” so they think that Horton is crazy. Horton tells the kangaroos that, “A persons a person, no matter how small” (Seuss) so he is going to keep protecting these people. The Wickersham Brothers, a couple of jungle monkeys, also make fun of Horton for protecting the “Whos” and they climb up Horton’s trunk, steal the clover, and give it to a black-bottomed eagle named Vlad Vlad-i-koff who flies off with the clover throughout the night at Horton chases after him. The next morning Vlad Vlad-i-koff drops the clover with the “Whos” on it into a huge field of clovers, and tells Horton that he will never find the “Whos” now. Horton searches and searches through three million clovers until he finally finds the “Whos” again. Horton checks with the Mayor of Whoville and everyone is fine, but a bit shaken up from their long bouncy journey.

As Horton is checking on the Mayor and the people of Whoville, the kangaroo and her baby come along with the Wickersham Brothers and dozens of their relatives, and tell Horton that they are going to tie him up and put him in a cage and boil his clover in Beezle-Nut oil, because they think he is crazy for talking to people that “aren’t real”. Horton decides that he must prove to everyone that the “Whos” are real, so he asks the Mayor to get all the “Whos” in “Whoville” the scream and shout, so that the other animals can hear them. The people of “Whoville” scream, and Horton can hear them loud and clear with his big elephant ears, but the other animals cannot. Horton encourages the people of “Whoville” to keep trying, and they do. They jump and scream and yell, they play banjos, drums, and bang on tin pans, but still they cannot be heard. Horton tells the Mayor to check the whole town, and make sure that everyone is making some sound. The Mayor searches “Whoville” and finds one very little boy, Jo-Jo, in apartment 12-J that isn’t making any noise at all. The Mayor runs with Jo-Jo to the top of the Eiffelberg Tower, and Jo-Jo yells out “YOPP!!”, and with that one extra voice the kangaroo, her baby, the Wickersham Brothers, and all of their relatives hear the people of “Whoville” and believe that they are real. After the people of “Whoville” are heard, Horton AND Kangaroo promise to protect them from now on and Kangaroo says, “From sun in the summer. From rain when it’s fall-ish, I’m going to protect them. No matter how small-ish!” (Dr. Seuss).


The 2008 production of “Horton Hears a Who!” directed by Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino has a runtime of 86 minutes, leaving a lot of time for artistic interpretation or deviation from the 72 page story. In general the basic plot of the movie is the same as the book, Horton hears a noise that he thinks could be a person coming from a speck of dust, Horton makes contact with the people of “Whoville” living on that speck of dust, and then Horton makes it his mission to protect the people of “Whoville” from whatever dangers they might encounter in the jungle. The main characters are the same, Horton is the hero, Kangaroo is the leader of the antagonism against Horton, and the Mayor of “Whoville” is the person that makes contact with Horton. In addition to these main characters Hayward and Martino have taken the liberty of adding a few new faces to the story, as well as changing information about some of the other secondary characters in the book. Some of the new characters shown in the movie version of this classic tale are a mole-rat called Morton, Horton’s best friend and partner in crime, and also is Horton’s more rationale counterpart. During the film Morton argues with Horton to try and make him give up on “Whoville” to avoid persecution from Mrs. Kangaroo. Other new characters in the movie version include the Mayor’s wife, the Mayor’s 96 daughters, Dr. LaRue, the town’s local scientist and professor, and the Town of “Whoville’s” city council, who make it their mission to boss around and belittle the Mayor.

Some alterations to the characters that occurred in the movie were that Mrs. Kangaroo’s baby actually has a name, Ruddy, and is more rebellious in the movie as opposed to in the book where he is very obedient to his mothers commands. Mrs. Kangaroo is also portrayed like an overbearing PTA mom, who “pouch-schools” her baby, because she just cannot stand Horton and his silly antics. In the movie there is also a lot more character development with Horton, we find out that he is a teacher in the Jungle who everyone, especially Mrs. Kangaroo, thinks is silly and foolish. We also find out that Horton is very lonely, and that he’s excited to have the people on the speck as his new friends. The Wickersham brothers have a much smaller role in the movie than the book, in the movie they are portrayed as a bunch of party animals and they do not help steal the clover from Horton like they do in the book. In the movie JoJo, the hero at the end of the story, is actually the Mayor’s gothic, quiet, and reclusive son. JoJo is the heir to the Mayor’s seat and doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps, so he spends his time alone in an observatory in the sky full of musical instruments, and doesn’t talk to anybody. It says in the movie that JoJo doesn’t speak to his father because he is afraid that if he tells him the truth about what he actually wants to do with his future, he will let him down or disappoint him.

A few interesting and humorous scenes were added to the movie, probably to make it longer, that don’t occur in the book. In one scene the Mayor is at the dentist while Horton is carrying the clover across a thin rope bridge to reach the Mountain of Nool. As Horton is walking across the unstable bridge it is swaying back and forth and pieces are breaking beneath his weight, and as he wiggles around the city of Whoville experiences a small earthquake, and the Mayor gets a shot of Novocain right in the arm instead of the mouth. These scenes didn’t add much to the storyline or the plot, but they were humorous to watch and would make children think about the kinds of things that could happen while living on a small speck. There is also a scene where the Mayor is putting his 96 daughters to bed, and one of them asks for a glass of water. After that all 95 other daughters ask for a glass of water too, so the Mayor has to carry 96 glasses of water up a windy staircase to the girls’ bedroom. This was another scene that didn’t add much to the plot of the story, but would be funny for kids to think about.

The narration for this movie contains some of the key phrases and passages from the book, and continues in the same rhyming style of Dr. Seuss, but obviously 86 minutes worth of film requires some deviation from the exact text of the book. Some of the more interesting quotes from the movie from Horton are, “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant, an Elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent,” and from Mrs. Kangaroo (talking about Horton) “the Jungle is no place to act like an animal,” and (talking about the Whos) “If you can’t see, hear, or feel something it doesn’t exist.”

Overall I thought that the movie version of “Horton Hears a Who!” was cute and humorous, although it did stray a great deal from the original text. What I liked about the movie was that there was a lot of character development, so you really understood why JoJo was so quiet, or why nobody in Nool really trusted Horton’s judgment. That amount of detail wasn’t available in the book, but the producers of the movie took a lot of artistic liberties and added that detail in on their own. That being said I think that a long time fan of the book might not enjoy the movie, since with the text the reader is really given the opportunity to form their own impressions of what the characters might be like, and in the movie you are denied that flexibility. I watched this movie with the little boy I babysit, and even though he’s only four he thought it was absolutely hilarious, so it is definitely something I would recommend for kids, but I don’t think I would use it in the classroom because there is so much more room for using your own imagination with the text, and the narration in the movie just cannot compare to the classic style of Dr. Seuss.