The Lorax

The Lorax (1972) is the Dr. Seuss animated TV special you can watch online on iFILM. Twenty-five minutes, rhyming narration, and a small mustached creature who speaks for the trees. Hawley Pratt directed.

The Once-ler arrives in a valley of soft Truffula trees and chops the first one down to make a useless garment called a Thneed. Business booms, smokestacks spread, the forest thins. Every time greed wins another round, the Lorax pops up from a stump with the same warning: the air is fouled, the fish have nowhere to swim, the animals have nothing to eat. Voiced by Eddie Albert and Bob Holt, the whole fable plays out like a song that turns into a reckoning.

This came out two decades before kids were learning ecology in class, and it lands harder than plenty of grown-up dramas. That last word — UNLESS — does more than any lecture could. A short, sharp watch for showing children where a wasteland comes from. Stream The Lorax (1972) online on iFILM.