The Lorax · reception & legacy
2012 · Chris Renaud
How The Lorax has been received, argued over, and remembered.
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.