Horton (Jim Carey) is an elephant with a enormous imagination who normally spends his days teaching the young animals of the jungle. However, one day he overhears a voice coming from a speck of dust floating through the air. He realizes that there must be people living on the speck and discovers the voice is the Mayor of Whoville (Steve Carell). Unfortunately nobody else in the jungle can hear the voice as they don’t have Horton’s huge ears and he soon finds he has to do everything he can to stop Whoville from being destroyed.

Horton Hears a Who! is a children’s story by Dr Suess which I have to admit to having never read. These books completely past me by as a child and I suspect I was subjected to less imaginative fodder instead. Which is a shame as I’m as much of a fan of rhyming verse as the next person. Still, I did recently get dragged along to do some shopping for a baby shower and had a chance to flick through the pages of Horton hears a Who!. It certainly seemed to me that the film stays pretty faithful to the story.

I think what I found most refreshing about this movie is that it took me a while to figure out which characters Jim Carey and Steve Carell were playing. It seriously could have been the other way around and I really like that. It felt like they were actually making an effort to play the characters as opposed to just being a famous voice in an animated cartoon. I find with some of the other animated stories, with a whole host of famous voices, it tends to distract a little bit from the actual story. Here I think the story was first and foremost in the minds of everyone involved.

I suppose it’s easy to be extremely casual about the animation because we’ve seen this kind of quality before but I’m always blown away by the amount of effort it must take. As you’d expect it’s all flawlessly done and is a visually stunning piece of animation. Certainly the feel of the characters seemed to fit perfectly with how they were portrayed in the book. That could have been a big pitfall for any die hard Dr Suess fans out there but I’d be surprised if they didn’t like this movie.

I liked the story. I think it was genuinely funny as well imaginative. Perfect for kids and there’s probably enough there to keep adults entertained as well. It also didn’t try to be a super cool movie with popular references thrown in. The original Dr Suess story was the focus and it served the film superbly well.

There’s definitely a lot to enjoy. A simple story that’s perfect for a family movie session. I can’t think of a more imaginative way to introduce the idea of parallel universes into the mind’s of kids!