Beloved by generations of children and their parents, Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who, about an elephant who never gives up in his commitment to save a teeny-tiny world that exists inside a speck of dust, makes the leap to the movies with all its whimsy, fun and hold-your-breath adventure intact.

Writing partners Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio have remained faithful to the spirit of the Seuss book, first published in the 1950s, even using some of Dr. Seuss’ famous rhyming sing-song in their screenplay, while co-directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino have based the film’s look on Seuss’s own drawings and notes. The result is a magical spin on an old favorite that only enhances its thrills while not abandoning the book’s sweet, selfless message.

As Horton puts it so plainly and sincerely, the theme of the book and the movie is, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” That sentiment echoes strongly through the film as Horton, against great odds and the ridicule of his fellow creatures in the Jungle of Nool, sets out to save that tiny speck and the residents of Who-ville he’s certain exist inside it, carrying it to a safe place atop a mountain.

Horton’s odyssey begins when one day he hears a faint, tiny voice from inside the speck. It’s the Mayor of Who-ville (Steve Carell), a place of tall houses that have the lopsided look of having partially melted and where nothing has ever gone wrong . . . until now. Striking up a “long-distance” relationship with the Mayor, who hears Horton by muted echoes rumbling through a drainpipe, Horton explains the danger of impending total destruction that Who-ville faces. Nevertheless, he promises to help, no matter what.

It doesn’t help his cause that none of the jungle animals believe the far-fetched tale spun by Horton (Jim Carrey, who has been to Who-ville before in Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas). Even his mouse pal, Morton (Seth Rogen), thinks Horton has cracked up. The Kangaroo (Carol Burnett), a self-important creature who believes she is the real leader of the jungle, wants all this “nonsense” about the speck of dust stopped, even threatening to boil it in a vat of bubbling oil once she snatches it from Horton.

What follows are a series of fast-paced, colorful adventures as Horton, never wavering in his promise to save the Whos, tries to bring the speck to safety while the Mayor tries to convince his fellow Whos of the imminent catastrophe they face. These include a sequence in which Horton rampages through the blue monkey territory in pursuit of the fly-away speck as the monkeys fire a barrage of bananas at him; the underhanded tricks of the toothy, demonic vulture Vlad (Will Arnett) who hopes to destroy the speck at the behest of Kangaroo. She’s a sour, letter-of-the-law creature who allows no leeway in her self-imposed rules.

One of the most exciting adventures Horton faces is trying to carry the speck, which rests atop a pink clover, across a rickety wooden footbridge over a deep ravine. Unfortunately, the bamboo boards break one by one as he passes over them. Each step the lumbering Horton takes results in an equal and opposite reaction in Who-ville where, in this funny/breathtaking sequence, the Mayor is sitting in a dentist’s chair with a novocain-filled hypodermic needle poised at his mouth.

Directors Hayward and Martino haven’t forgotten the clever little touches that make Horton so special, such as wrapping Horton’s huge ears into a bathing cap or a baseball cap or using them to help the giant creature do the backstroke.

The Mayor, who has 96 daughters and one son, Jo-Jo, has his own problems. Like Horton, no one believes the Mayor when he tells them he is getting dire warnings from an enormous elephant in the sky that no one can see or that their world exists on a speck of dust that the elephant is protecting. The Who-ville City Council, a team of overly cheerful civic promoters, wants him muzzled. Even worse, Jo-Jo is rebelling against his father’s plan to have him carry on the family tradition to become one of the long line of Who-ville mayors. Instead, Jo-Jo is setting out to become his own person. All these things will collide in Horton’s death-defying cataclysmic ending.

The vocal talents have been well matched to their characters. Standouts are Carrey, who makes Horton a sweet-natured creature with a heart of gold and a never-say-die resolve that’s affecting; Carell as the beleaguered Mayor who risks all to save his doubting family and constituents from doom; Burnett as the closed-minded law-and-order boss of the jungle; Arnett as the Russian-accented Vlad who revels in creating discomfort. The actors, as much as the animators, bring to life these three-dimensional creatures who face dilemmas that have parallels in our real world.

*****Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who

Voices: Jim Carrey, Steve Carell, Carol Burnett, Will Arnett, Isla Fisher, Amy Poehler, Seth Rogen.

Rated: G

mjanuson@projo.com

Following the rousing international success of director Christopher Nolan’s new, darker take on the Batman legend three years ago in Batman Begins, he’s back with much of the holdover cast from the first film for the slightly less somber The Dark Knight.

This Batman film is more akin to the comic book stories that spawned the series in the first place, but with the late Heath Ledger making a bravura grandstand performance as The Joker that will make you forget such previous incarnations of the character as Cesar Romero in the TV series and Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman. Early magazine writers have already suggested a posthumous Oscar nomination for Ledger, whose performance is by turns creepy, criminally insane and coquettishly fey, but always memorable with his mouth curled up in a perpetual smile. Once you see Ledger’s flamboyantly eerie Joker, you most likely will second the nomination call.

Certainly Ledger, whose Joker shocks us early on with his trick of how to make a pencil disappear, has taken the spotlight off Christian Bale. Bale has the film’s title role again as multi-millionaire playboy and industrialist Bruce Wayne, who dons the black cape to mete out vigilante justice. Bale is a much more internal actor than Ledger, who captivates with his wise-guy comic’s delivery — “I just DO things,” he says coyly. As written, Bale’s Bruce instead mirrors the moody darkness of The Dark Knight.

The main characters from Batman Begins are back again, too. But Michael Caine has surprisingly little to do this time as faithful butler Alfred, although Gary Oldman has lots more to do as Police Lt. Jim Gordon, who depends on Batman to save the day when the criminal elements have become too brazen. Morgan Freeman returns as Batman’s right-hand man and gadgetmeister Lucius Fox, and in typical Freeman fashion knows more about the intricacies of love and crime than anyone else. However, Katie Holmes has cruised on to other interests and has been replaced as Batman’s girlfriend, Rachel Dawes, by Maggie Gyllenhaal.

But what’s this? Rachel is now seen around town on the arm of dashing new crusading District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), something that clearly troubles Bruce. It’s established that while Rachel still loves Bruce and vice-versa, she couldn’t find room in her love life to accommodate Batman’s frequent nighttime sallies against evildoers trying to take over Gotham City (this time played by Chicago). The handsome, straight-arrow Harvey seems to fill the bill. But, in one of the film’s few comic turns, Bruce gets his revenge by arriving at social functions he knows Rachel and Harvey will attend on the arm of some — or even two — lovely woman in hopes of making Rachel jealous.

Besides the usual Mob influence in the corrupt doings of Gotham City comes The Joker. Cleverly, insistently, he bullies his way into working for the mobsters, while also plotting his own control of Gotham through his own terror brigade. Curiously, The Joker manages to pick up an ever-changing gang of faithful followers of his own, even though, like Al-Qaida leaders who manage to recruit an unending string of suicide bombers, one wonders why anyone would follow The Joker, as he usually winds up dead … and at The Joker’s own hand. That’s driven home in the smashingly thrilling, violence-filled opening sequence in which The Joker leads a gang of clown-masked robbers in a major heist of a Mob-owned bank.

And yet, unlike the mobsters he both works for and increasingly controls, money isn’t the most important thing in The Joker’s life. It marks the major difference between The Dark Knight and other comics-based action films of the summer.

Yes, The Dark Knight has terrific special effects, such as when Batman makes an amazing escape from a Hong Kong high-rise or smashes through a line of cars in the new armor-plated Batmobile. It has larger-than-life villains, just like Iron Man, Hellboy II and Indiana Jones.

But it also has conflicted characters, such as the attraction-dismissal that’s going on between Bruce and Rachel, as well as an overwhelming sense of the struggle between good and evil going on in every human. That’s really what the whole second half of The Dark Knight revolves around, as one major character, torn by grief and anger, does a 180-degree swing; another character makes a split-second life-altering decision; many characters are tested on their sense of human compassion — the choice of whether to save themselves by killing innocent people.

The ultimate goal of The Joker, who tells a different story about the scars that have left his face in a perpetual grin, is to demonstrate man’s inhumanity to man. He bets his twisted schemes will find resonance with others. Or as Harvey says with such foresight near the start of the film, “You either die a hero or live long enough to be the villain.”

It’s a grandiose, complex question that most big-scale action films boil down to a simple equation of good versus evil. Here, it’s not always clear who the good guy is or if the “good guy” will remain good to the end. Nolan, and co-writer brother Jonathan Nolan, use their large canvas to ask subtle, delicate questions of self-sacrifice, giving the audience something to ponder afterward beyond the usual exploding scenery.

****The Dark Knight

Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman.

Rated: PG-13, contains intense violence.

mjanuson@projo.com

Mama mia! The international stage sensation Mamma Mia! trips over its platform shoes on the way to the movie screen.

The stage show had the same tiny plot as the film, stitched together by the bouncy, infectious music of ABBA, the Swedish singing group that was an international sensation in the late 1970s and early 1980s. On stage, the songs captivated the audience, who wound up singing along and dancing in the aisles. In the film, the singing and dancing is done largely by such unlikely stars as Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth, who have hardly made a name for themselves in musicals, and the fragile plot seems even more so when played out on real locations.

In Mamma Mia! a 20-year-old bride-to-be named Sophie lives on a Greek island where her mother owns a crumbling hotel at the top of a hill. Unbeknownst to Mom, Sophie invites three strangers to her wedding, certain that one of them is the father she has never known. “I’ll know him when I see him,” Sophie tells her girlfriends.

But Sophie’s plan goes awry when Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) and Harry (Colin Firth) turn up and she can’t tell them from Tom, Dick or Harry. Which of the three charming lugs will walk Sophie down the aisle is the film’s central crisis. And her mother, aghast at the prospect of seeing three men she had flings with 20 years ago and had never expected to see again, is as clueless as they are as to why they’re there. Well, it’s Sophie’s choice, of course.

This light, daffy premise was a charmer on stage. But in the headlights of reality on the movie screen, it seems phony and overloaded with forced frivolity.

It’s the straw cowboy hat that Streep plops on her head to meet two old girlfriends — former bandmates in the singing group Donna and the Dynamos — that makes one begin to wonder if Mamma Mia! on-screen is headed down the wrong track. Streep as a former hippie with a hayseed hat? Even for the Academy Award-winning actress, it’s a stretch.

Yes, the ABBA soundtrack, mostly written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, is still as cheerfully bouncy as one remembers. But even the insistently sex-charged “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight),” performed by Donna (Streep) and bandmates Tanya (Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Julie Walters) and what seems to be the entire female population of the island, comes across as manufactured rather than spontaneous. Worse, the uninspired choreography is more of the jump-up-and-down variety than anything clever or original.

When the actors suddenly break into prerecorded, fully orchestrated song, it’s awkward rather than buoyant. That becomes maddeningly apparent the longer Mamma Mia! goes on. When, near the end of the film, as her daughter’s wedding fast approaches and Donna spills out her heart to Sam in the plaintive “The Winner Takes It All,” there were titters from a preview audience at yet another attempt to craft another ABBA song into the plot.

Amanda Seyfried, as Sophie, and Dominic Cooper as her fiancé Sky, have some of the best voices. But Streep, who sang on screen most recently in A Prairie Home Companion, holds up her end of the musical scale, while Baranski and Walters do well.

But the most painful part of Mamma Mia! is trying to get three non-singing actors to make an impact in this musical. Brosnan and Firth make a game go of it, but are defeated by their inability to carry a tune. British stage and opera director Phyllida Lloyd (who staged the London and Broadway productions of Mamma Mia!) tries to disguise this by having the music ratcheted up loudly when they begin to sing, with an unseen backup chorus often adding their voices as well.

Streep has a funny moment at Donna’s first sight of her three former lovers, whom Sophie has hidden from her mother (she thinks) in the goat shed. Streep, in a mix of anger, curiosity and sexual hunger, dances all over the shed like a caged tiger in heat, bouncing along the roof and hanging upside down to peek into a window to make sure that what she can’t believe is true, all the while singing the title song. It’s funny and exhausting. So, too, is the hedonistic free-for-all production number to “Does Your Mother Know?” and the wacky turn by Donna and the Dynamos, in sequins and platform shoes, to “Super Trouper.”

So there are some buoyantly fun moments, but quickly Mamma Mia! becomes too much of a good thing.

**Mamma Mia!

Starring: Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard, Julie Walters, Christine Baranski, Amanda Seyfried, Dominic Cooper.

Rated: PG-13, contains adult themes.

mjanuson@projo.com