'The Lorax' Is the Hottest Movie to Hate

Jen Doll

The people who made The Lorax are probably in need of a hug right now. The New York Times' A.O. Scott issued a wonderfully scathing diatribe against it on Thursday, with the New York Post's Kyle Smith following up today with a cringeworthy critique in rhyme that he subtitles "an explanation in verse for why it could hardly be worse!" Note to Smith: A movie review written in couplets that ends with a criticism of the U.S. president (with a dig at Bob Dylan on the way) has never in the history of time made anything better. 

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But if there's anything to be gained from a hate-filled review, it's the pleasure of reading it. Scott and Smith are not the only reviewers to have despised the film. Herewith, a collection of the best Lorax disses: 

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  • "Its knickers are twisted so high and so tight / It could lead the day’s news on the Daily Kos site." —Smith

  • It looks like something you’ve seen before. In fact, you have, if you saw “Despicable Me” — “The Lorax” is from the same team and it has the same rubbery, pre-made look and hungry-for-merchandising feel. —Stephen Whitty, The Star-Ledger

  • "Its relationship to Dr. Seuss’s book is precisely that of the synthetic trees that line the streets of Thneedville to the organic Truffulas they have displaced. The movie is a noisy, useless piece of junk, reverse-engineered into something resembling popular art in accordance with the reigning imperatives of marketing and brand extension." —Scott

  • "More a civics lesson than a story, The Lorax is the tale of a cantankerous woodland sprite who comes across as a shrill nag." —Christopher Lloyd, the Herald-Tribune

  • "Insidious nonsense from Hollywood...Hollywood is once again trying to indoctrinate our children."  —Lou Dobbs

  • "It’s all preaching and perching on messages dry. Bob Dylan’s poor knees are six times as spry." —Smith

  • Did you ever get a package where the bubble wrap was 10 times the volume of the item inside? That's what "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax" is like." —Colin Covert, Star Tribune

  • "The movie’s silliness, like its preachiness, is loud and slightly hysterical, as if young viewers could be entertained only by a ceaseless barrage of sensory stimulus and pop-culture attitude, or instructed by songs that make the collected works of Up With People sound like Metallica." —Scott

  • "I've come to fear these movies." —Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

  • "When this story’s harrumphing and pleading its plea. I’d prefer to get lectured by Barack O-B." —Smith

  • With its cotton-candy-colored palette of orange, pink and purple truffula trees, it looks like a bowl of fuzzy Froot Loops. But it goes down like an order of oatmeal.” — Michael O’Sullivan, The Washington Post

  • "There is an obvious metaphor here, but the movie is blind to it, and to everything else that is interesting or true in the story it tries to tell." —Scott

  • "There are songs here, it’s true, but they’re musical rants / As stale as the crust on your dad’s underpants. You’ll forget them before this young March hits the ides; I have heard better tunes on Clay Aiken’s B-sides." —Smith

Ouch. As chance would have it, it's also the birthday of Dr. Seuss (aka Theodor Geisel) today. Ignore the haters, sir. Moira McDonald of The Seattle Times LOVED the film.