The movie overall was cute. They of course included the major lines from the book. My girls have been saying,"A person's a person no matter how small," since we left the theater. I liked Jim Carrey's Horton, and the ending was really funny (albeit extremely hokey). So that's the good part...
There is a one line dig at homeschooling that normally wouldn't bother me, but for some reason it did this time. The "bad guy" in the movie make the claim that she "pouch schools". Most of the time I find that kind of humor... well, humorous. In this case the reasons she "pouchschooled" were so against the reasons most people homeschool that it bugged me to throw that kind of stereotype out there. The character is an uptight control freak who is angry that Horton is encouraging the kids to "Use their imaginations." I don't begin to speak for the homeschooling community, but the people I know are excited that their kids are given more opportunities to use their imaginations at home than public school would provide. I realize that the religious zealots homeschool to keep their kids from learning about evolution, but even those kids are allowed more creative outlets than public school allows.
The second issue I take with the movie is that the main "bad guy" is a kangaroo who doesn't believe in anything you can't see, touch or hear. Sounds a bit like an atheist to me. Now obviously in real life some atheists are "good guys" and some are "bad guys". In this case the kangaroo was the one starting the trouble. So I guess that makes her a "bad guy" no matter what she believes. I guess I am a little touchy that the villain would be an atheist homeschoolers since that describes me.
Luckily neither of my daughters seemed to catch the pouchschooling=homeschooling thing. Taken at face value the movie was entertaining... Maybe I am just being overly sensitive about the rest.
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