Monday
Mar102008
Welcome MSNBC.com Readers
Monday, March 10, 2008 at 12:59PM ...and many thanks to those of you who were already here and shared your reactions on all things Seuss. I totally talked about you!
P.S. Drew Carey article people, thanks for stopping in as well. Have a glass.
whoing and Plinkoing and just double-fisting at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com
Share Article Comments Off 
Reader Comments (4)
"You can pay Jim Carrey 2.5 mil, but he’s just not Daddy. "
You hit that nail right in the head :-)
Personally, I think Boris Karloff's voice was what made the Grinch cartoon great. Jim Carrey was just not the same.
I think the reason why the Jones/Seuss "Grinch" collaboration has embedded itself in our cultural landscape while their "Horton" didn't is simply because we're nostalgia fiends around Christmas and zeitgeist-chasers the rest of the year.
It's the same reason why "Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!" is on year after year as well. Yeah, I know, there's the Great Pumpkin special, too, but it doesn't carry nearly the same clout.
I refuse to believe that neither Jones/Seuss nor Schulz and whoever produced the "Peanuts" TV specials couldn't catch that lightning in a bottle more than once.
I was almost worried you wouldn't mention The Lorax at all, but you squeezed him in at the last sentence. Go you! It took me forever to go from "kid-viewing" mode with that cartoon to actually understand the "don't pollute" message, but I totally used it for a college philosophy paper. Go me!
I think that the Seuss books just lend themselves better to animation rather than live-action. As you said, a 100 word book is tough to stretch into a 2 hour feature and much easier to put into a 45 minute TV special. Go figure. Though of the more complicated movies, the stab at Grinch was the best, even though it won't ever achieve "Christmas Tradition" coverage like the cartoon.