The Lorax

A boy goes to the Once-ler, who lives in the ruins outside town, and asks what happened. The Once-ler tells him: this place was once full of Truffula trees. He cut the first one, made a Thneed out of its soft top and started selling. A factory went up, production grew, and the trees ran out. At every cutting the Lorax came up out of the ground and objected; nobody listened. Hawley Pratt directs. It was made at DePatie-Freleng and shown on American television in 1972. The source is Dr. Seuss's book of the same name, and Theodor Geisel worked on the script. The method is direct. The text is in verse, in the language of a children's book, and what it says is a critique of industry and of an irreversible ecological ruin. The timing matters. The environmental movement was newly rising in America at the start of the seventies, and this was among the first children's programmes to take the subject on directly. There were attempts to remove the book from school reading in some places, with objections from the timber industry and even a counter book. Bob Holt voiced the Lorax and the voice is the most remembered thing about it. It runs about twenty five minutes. Who it is for: viewers who like Dr. Seuss adaptations and classic television animation. Who it is not for: the animation is simple, the pace is low, and the message is nowhere implicit.