Insta-review: HORTON HEARS A WHO

Real quick, like: Easily the year's best movie about sweet dumb talking elephants and tiny worlds in existential crisis. Plus, the first adaptation to stay True to the Seuss since, like, the Chuck Jones cartoons a lifetime ago. The animation, the flavor, the expansion of the story (already one of Dr. Seuss' "long" books) all just works.

Bonus personal details: Saw this on the Fox lot with Zev, his first critics' screening and, let's see, third-ever movie in a theater. He ate it up. Turned around an buried his head a few times, when the Wickersham Brothers or Vladikov the vulture (Will Arnett! Love Will Arnett) were on-screen. By the end he was chanting and clapping with the Whos, and pretending to play a trumpet, and what else do you want?

Good news for tiny people developing ever-more-complex worldviews: The key for him, and anybody at a fragile age where they're trying to reconcile how Good and Bad can co-exist, it's important that all the bad guys in the story not only get schooled but, as Zev says, "turn good."

Full review: Here.

Bonus bong-related detail: Oh, and here's one of those trippy "sync" videos, with the old Chuck Jones cartoon version of HORTON and The Who's "Teenage Wasteland." Compare and contrast.