Horton Hears a Who! (Steve Martino, Jimmy Hayward, 2008)

***½
USA



One of the happier Dr. Seuss adaptations as well as one of the warmer contemporary cartoons about talking animals with spurts of 'attitood'. Even the aggressively postmodern snippets like the erratic anime parody, although jarring, are never quite grating since they're never mean-spirited. The voice-work by an unusually well-behaved Jim Carrey and the always lovable Steve Carell helps enormously. That said, here's hoping the overbearing-dad-alienated-teen dynamic never becomes a cartoon subplot again.