Sightlines · reception

How The Lorax was received

2012 · Chris Renaud · The Lorax on Sightlines

The arc

Critics shrugged at it in 2012 — an anti-consumerist fable launched with a mountain of corporate tie-ins — but the internet gave it a bizarre second life, and it's now remembered less as a movie than as a formative meme event for a generation of Tumblr users.

What’s debated

The eternal gripe: how does a story about greed destroying nature end up advertising SUVs — sellout hypocrisy, or just how kids' movies get made?

Its footprint

This is the film that spawned the Once-ler fandom, one of Tumblr's most infamous 2012 phenomena, plus the endlessly memed villain song 'How Bad Can I Be?' and a thousand ironic 'I speak for the trees' jokes.

Where it stands

A so-bad-it's-fascinating internet artifact — low Letterboxd ratings, but reviewed with more jokes and nostalgia than almost any 'good' animated film of its year.

Did you know? Danny DeVito voiced the Lorax not just in English but personally re-recorded the role for the Russian, German, Italian, Spanish and Catalan dubs — despite not speaking those languages, learning his lines phonetically.