The Lorax/YMMV

The Book and TV Special

 * Anvilicious: The book is constantly telling you the importance of nature. Although, that is very much the point. To many, this is part of its charm.
 * Downer Ending: Though one that ends on a hopeful note ("UNLESS").
 * Straw Man Has a Point: In the TV special, the Once-Ler says that he can't just shut down the plant and lay off ten thousand workers because its bad for the country.
 * Strawman Political: The "nature" depicted has no bugs, parasites, diseases, dangerous animals or anything "icky" about it like any real wilderness, it's completely an unrealistically ideal portrait of nature. Also, it fails to account for the fact that businesses have a bona fide profit motivation to protect the wilderness, at least the part of it they're using (if the Once-ler had been smart with his business plans they would have included replanting trees, it's just common sense).
 * He's the Once-ler because his strategy is good if you're amoral and only care about making money ONCE (rather than continuously).
 * Tear Jerker
 * Any of the reprises played during the exoduses of the Barbaloots, Swamy-swams, Hummingfish and Once-Lers. Also the song Once-Ler sings when he's analyzing himself, guilty of what he's done and personally ashamed to be a Once-Ler.

The Film
"Once-ler: WHO CARES IF A FEW TREES ARE DYING?"
 * Bittersweet Ending: The townspeople don't really learn any lesson, they simply continue to blindly follow whoever makes an impression on them (not to mention how they don't have a mayor or canned air salesman anymore!), the Once-ler gets redemption from the Lorax, but he can't get his life back, and never really discovers his "full potential", instead he just fixes what he broke, and Ted's ending was neutral. The only character that really ends up with a truly good ending is "nature", if you want to count that.
 * Black and Gray Morality: The Once-ler is made far more sympathetic. In the animated special, he's not outright bad, but he is ignorant and careless. In the film, he's really only cutting down trees by pressure from his family who aren't sympathetic in the least. The film's other man antagonist, however, is on-par with a Captain Planet villain. Thus we have Once-ler (Gray) and O'Hare (Black).
 * Okay, but they're an Anti Villain and the Big Bad, respectively. The good guys are pretty much good.
 * Crowning Moment of Heartwarming:
 * "Let It Grow" the finale, especially when
 * Also in the end,.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome:
 * How ba-ah-ah-ad can I be?
 * John Powell's orchestral work on the score is spectacular as usual.
 * At first I didn't realize I needed all this stuff...
 * Ear Worm: "How Bad Can I Be?" and "Let It Grow (Celebrate The World)".
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Once-ler is pretty popular as it is, but evil Once-ler was only on screen for a few minutes (his Villain Song and the scene that followed it) and yet he's gotten a ton of fanart. Wonder why?
 * Ed Helms himself thinks the Once-ler fandom has gotten out of hand.
 * Estrogen Brigade: Younger Once-ler attracts A LOT of this. To the point that he has become a fandom of his own.
 * Fix Fic: The amount of time devoted to things that weren't part of the source material, the way a large portion of the original story was abridged into a single song sequence, and the fully resolved happy ending in place of a thought-provoking question-mark endng make it like one to an extent.
 * Flat Character: O'Hare. There's a reason he's been compared to a Captain Planet villain. Though this does give us a rather funny moment in the final musical number where he seems about ready to change his ways....then says "Naaah! Just kidding!", remaining a Flat Character to the end.
 * Fridge Brilliance:
 * The Once-ler's "it's a girl, isn't it?" comment. Ted's doing something crazy and possibly stupid to impress Audrey. The Once-ler got where he is trying to impress a girl too---his mother.
 * The reason for everyone's Plot Induced Stupidity- inbreeding and the chemicals in the air and water (at least for the post-Lorax scenes).
 * The Onceler's business strategy of completely wiping out his source of income seems short-sighted, even from a profit perspective. However, the thneed is shown as a stupid short-lived fad that no one needs. Once the fad died out, his source of revenue would have ended whether the trees he needed to make thneeds still existed or not.
 * In the "How Bad Can I Be" sequence, At one point, The Once-ler's body begins to grow bigger than the land around him; in other words, he, like his corporation, starts biggering.
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: Those Misaimed Marketing deals down below that make the Lorax into a product mascot? The film mirrors this in one scene where the paparazzi takes a photo of the Lorax accidentally holding a Thneed, then posting on an ad now claiming Thneeds are "Lorax approved".
 * Love It or Hate It: Critics are generally split right down the middle when it comes to their opinions on this film.
 * Critical Dissonance: General audiences mostly seem to like it fine, though.
 * Memetic Mutation: "Dat's a woman??" Helped in no small way to aaaaaaaaaaall the trailers including this line!
 * Misaimed Marketing:
 * This. It doesn't take a genius to see why.
 * Also promoting the movie is the typical host of theater paraphernalia... including putting the film's logo on disposable paper popcorn holders. Again, it does not take a genius to ascertain why this runs somewhat counter to the message of The Lorax.
 * Universal is treating this film like any other major Hollywood animated blockbuster, by giving it 70+ tie-ins with products, immense marketing strategies, and celebrity voices. What most people don't seem to get is that the message of the book is that it's WRONG to buy into excessive "Thneeds" that harm the environment!
 * In general, the kids are sucked in towards the cute animals, despite the fact that they appear only in flashbacks and are evicted out due to destruction of their habitat.
 * Mis Blamed: A number of viewers and critics accused the Lorax of trying to kill Once-ler by sending him afloat the river on his bed...despite the fact that it was a freak accident from a sleeping Once-ler that put his life in jeopardy (his leg accidentally steers the bed down the wrong stream, toward a waterfall), and the Lorax outright says after he saves Once-ler that he didn't want him dead, just to "harmlessly drift away downstream".
 * The Waterfall wasn't that far away from where they set the once-ler into the stream, and there was always a strong (and very obvious) possibility he could drift down there by accident.
 * Not to mention that if he had wanted Once-Ler dead, he probably wouldn't have used a pair or bar-ba-loots as a Magical Defibrillator.
 * Ms. Fanservice: Audrey, she proves that you never need the usual Fanservice in order to appear so beautiful.
 * Nightmare Fuel: Old Man Once-ler when he's first seen peering through the window and reaching out at Ted, but he just gets less scary from there.
 * Also, "How Bad Can I Be" is pretty fun and upbeat for a Villain Song...until the very end, which has a giant Once-ler looming over the entire forest which he is destroying, giving a Slasher Smile after shouting the last lyrics "HOW BAD COULD THIS POSSIBLY BEEEEEE?"


 * Romantic Plot Tumor: Critics generally think that the relationship between Audrey and Ted detracted from the overall message, as it changes the driving force of the original book (simply wondering just how the world fell into decay) into... a kid trying to impress a girl. Though they fail to point out that Ted's ultimate motivations do change once he hears the full story of the Lorax and the fate of the Truffula Trees and that impressing Audrey was Ted's initial intent. The look on Ted's face when he saw how much of a Crapsack World it was outside of town was the beginning of his other intent: to promote the story's Green Aesop, thus freeing him from the Selfish Good trope.
 * Ruined FOREVER: While the reaction to the trailers have been pretty positive overall, there are a few fans of the book who weren't too pleased. Complaints have included the city and overall tone of the story feeling too bright and cheery, the expansion of the framing story to include a romance and a stock Corrupt Corporate Executive, questionable choices for the voice casting, the Once-ler's face being shown, and the complete ignorance of the message from the original book...all judged from the trailer. ....which failed to tell you this is a musical, resulting in more Ruined FOREVER claims!
 * Tear Jerker: The last Truffula tree falling.
 * "Unless".
 * What an Idiot: Maybe the Once-Ler could have told his greedy family that harvesting Truffula leaves by clearing cutting the forest is as ridiculously self-destructive a business practice as an apple farmer harvesting by chopping down his orchard.
 * The Point of the Original was to say that the Once-ler was only interested in making a profit once, teaching viewers a lesson about renewable resources. The Movie however, fails to address that.