The Lorax

     Quick note before we begin: I have never read the Lorax, nor seen the original Seuss special. I understand the deviations made between the original and this, and they do factor into the review, but not to the extent of other reviews of this movie.


    First question: Why didn't Blue Sky make this? They've proven they can do Dr Seuss pretty darn well, and can make 3D animation act similarly to Seussian creatures (stretchy and bouncy). This movie just basically looks like Despicable Me meets some silly stuff, and doesn't feel like Doctor Seuss.
     Second question: What is with Illumination entertainment and Bowl cuts? The two villains they've had both have Bowl cuts, and end up being non-menacing joke-villains.
     Related to the previous question, why did The Lorax need a villain? They already have a villain, the Onceler. He cuts down the trees and turns the area into a smog-filled wasteland.

     Speaking of the Onceler, in the original version we never see the Onceler's face, only his arms. This was to have the message that the Onceler could be anyone, just like the kid he's telling the story to could be anyone. Anyone can destroy nature, and anyone can also restore it. Honesty it doesn't bother me that we see him and lose symbolism. What bothers me more is the banal antics... Pulling his bed out of the house while he's sleeping, going down a river to a waterfall... a "bromance" story... Whenever the story deviated from the original is when it felt like it was dragging  the most to me. And the songs... The songs in this movie just feel forced, like they were thinking "This is a Seuss movie, so we need songs!"
     The We are Here song from Horton Hears a Who was badass, and let me explain why: anyone who knows about the original book knows that the whos all have to make a lot of noise. In the 3D version, they do it through a massive chorus and band that feels epic. It was written by John Powell, who has done How to Train your Dragon, Rio, Kung Fu Panda 2, Bolt, Happy Feet, X-men: Last Stand... He also did the Lorax. Not that it is at all apparent, since the songs almost seem like Randy Newman wrote them then told John Powell to shine them. It is sad when I want to hear the song "Let It Die" which was an acapella solo, more than "Let It Grow" which featured an entire city singing.


     None of that is even getting into the plot, which feels padded further than it needed to be. The story of boy-whats-his-name-it-doesn't-matter, and his love for miss-high-school-not-gonna-date-you-jailbait, is completely overdone and annoying. The Onceler's family are also pointless and annoying, just serving as comedy relief in a movie with too much of it.
    I'm not going to try and summarize the movie, I'll just give the important points:

• The Onceler is looking for a special plant to provide supplies for his thneed, which is a type of cloth that can become any article of clothing.
• He finds the product in Truffula trees, and cuts one down to start making the thneed.
• Cutting down the tree summons the Lorax, who speaks for the trees.
• The Lorax tries to convince the Onceler to not cutdown the trees.
• The Onceler tries harvesting from the trees without cutting them down, but finds it too slow for production. So he resumes cutting the trees down.
• After a while, all the trees are cut down, and the animals and the Lorax are forced to leave.
• The Onceler has the last seed of the Truffula tree, and gives it to jailbait-boy so he may regrow the tree in a couple decades.

     That's it, that's all the movie needs. Bugger the love story, bugger the story about privatizing air, just focus on Onceler growing his industry, how it destroys the surrounding area, and how it needs to be repaired. Nothing else is necessary. This could be a half-hour tv special, it did not need to be a full-length movie. There is almost no material to the story to make it feature length.

     Now, compare this to the Grinch... The Grinch didn't do much better than the Lorax, but it had a better idea on how to make it last longer. It gave motivation to the Grinch, which is something the original didn't have.

     The Lorax is a short story, with no real room for expansion. Any expansion just feels like padding, and that is always a bad idea.

This has been Fixer Sue, telling you a movie that is already rated poorly, is unnecessary.

Oh, and Illumination entertainment... Drop the minions. The animals in the story were just minions in furry skins. Yes they were successful, but they grate. If you try the formula again more people will notice and start to hate you like they did pre-How to Train your Dragon Dreamworks.

Symphony: Liberate your music

     Do you remember my matrix for amount of information in certain forms of media? Do you remember how Video Games top that list?
     Well, you may know the flaw in that. There are games like Galaga and Digdug, that have pretty much no information at all, with simple very simple gameplay as well. You learn pretty much nothing about who is fighting and why in the confines of the game. This is mostly because of the "arcade" feel of the games. They are intended to be a fast game, and a story would only waste quarters.
     Which is why this game in particular is rather interesting...

     Symphony is a rhythm game mixed with Galaga. The background music is your music, and the levels are built around it. Meaning you could be fighting sound-demon-polygons to classical music, rock, polka... As deep as your music library.
     That's the main pull of the game. But as for the game itself...


     The game is similar to a "bullet hell" type game (a game that has tons and tons of projectiles everywhere, and is completely frantic). Except that there aren't a ton of bullets coming your way. It's a whole bunch of enemies. If you ram into them, you're more than likely dead. If you get hit by one of their bullets, you're dead. You do have infinite lives, but it comes out of your score, which is used to upgrade your weapons and make fighting the enemies easier.
     There are several different types of weapons in the game.
     You start out with normal blasters. They shoot in a straight line and don't level up, they are very basic and are best replaced ASAP.
     After the first song, you'll unlock the subwoofer. It is a music based weapon, that fires based on the song, and the strength is based on the song as well. It is actually very underwhelming compared to the other weapons. It might be cool to fight a boss with only subwoofers, but it'd be incredibly difficult.
     Then there are rockets which you can set to fire off as soon as they reappear (the spawn time is about a second, probably less.) or let them all spawn for a powerful volley, cannons that can either: shoot powerful single bursts, a stream of weaker beams at high speeds, or medium bursts that will shoot forward and back (very useful when the enemies will be all around you). There is also a shotgun which fires off beams that scatter, and a "sprinkler" type cannon that shoots as it flails about. There is also a electrical charge attack, which is absolutely devastating... to whom it devastates depends on whether you planned for it's use or not.
     Each weapon (and even the pick ups, which are bombs and invincibility (the bomb is called 1812 symphony. Invincibility doesn't get a special name.)) can be upgraded by spending points earned from songs. However, there is a special class of weapons: Furio. These weapons are stronger than the normal ones. Their level 3 is equal to the level 4 of the normal, and are significantly stronger at level 5 than the normal.

     But, never mind the weapons... I mentioned something in the intro about story and arcade games. Why did I do that?
     Because, this game that has gameplay that only lasts as long as a song, has a plot.

     A demon is trying to enter the world through your music, he has captured 5 of the world's greatest composers and turned them into demons, and you have to fight the demons and their weird polygonal-light-spaceship minions and free the composers and your music!
     Yes it is a simple plot, but it is unique since the game like this usually doesn't have a plot. And, strangely enough, the plot does make you want to keep playing. It actually makes you want to beat this demon/Elder God.
      Well, that and the gameplay itself is addicting.
     The enemies are quite fun, often forcing you to think on your toes and act strategically to survive an encounter.


     The only thing I can say that is negative, is that the enemies tend to blend in with the environment too much. It'd be better if they would act inversely to the background, like red when it's blue and blue when it's red. That and it feels like the enemies should be "Mickey Mousing" ie, acting with and appearing with the music. But, it is an indie company, and they did a lot with what they had. Hopefully if they make a sequel, they'll make the adjustments. ^^

This has been Fixer Sue, finishing a review I wrote more than 2 months ago!