Well, Bad Times at the El Royale isn't in theaters where I live anymore, so I saw this instead. The Grinch is a 2018 animated movie based on the children's classic "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" by Dr. Seuss. It was published by Illumination Entertainment and released on November 9th. A Christmas movie. In November. Before Thanksgiving happened. Good job. This movie was directed by Scott Mosier (the producer of Clerks) and Yarrow Cheney (the director of The Secret Life of Pets). Benedict Cumberbatch steps into the mantle of the Grinch for this movie, with the supporting cast including Angela Lansbury as Mayor McGerkle, musician Pharrell Williams as the narrator, Kenan Thompson as Mr. Bricklebaum, and a bunch of other actors that I don't know playing the rest of the Whos. Because it's a Dr. Seuss movie, I was planning on doing this whole thing in rhyme, but I couldn't make it work. I'm not that good at writing reviews yet, so I'll just do it like normal. Does this new interpretation stand up to the original 1966 TV special, or is the Jim Carrey version better by comparison? I actually do like the Jim Carrey version, though.
In case you didn't know going into it that it was an Illumination movie, don't worry. The intro reminds you with a full minute of a Minion screaming with Kevin Hart bunny from Secret Life of Pets. It goes on for way too long. But the first thing I noticed, after the movie actually started, is that the animation is beautiful! Whoville looks fantastically detailed, and the Whos look wonderful. The fur physics constantly blew me away. Say what you want about the quality of Illumination's movies, but they know how to animate. Unfortunately, except for slapstick moments involving the Grinch, not much is done with the animation. It's fantastic, yes, but it isn't quick. The characters don't move in a quick and animated way, aside from the Grinch, the dog, and a really fat reindeer that shows up halfway through the movie and then just kinda stays. It's pretty boring that almost nothing be done with this stellar animation. I also noticed that a lot of the sweeping shots were very blurry. I thought it was a problem with my glasses, but no. It was the movie. And the voice acting was also underwhelming, aside from the lead. Benedict Cumberbatch was very good as the Grinch. He perfectly mixed his long-time grumpiness throughout most of the movie with the niceness trying to get out in a few of the scenes. Cindy-Lou Who's mother was decently-acted, Angela Lansbury did good with the one scene she had. The rest of the actors, on the other hand, aren't really that good. They all sounded boring, even Cindy Lou-Who. She's passable when she has to act determined, but, the rest of the time, it's like she's just another standard Who that just happens to have a lot of screentime. She also sounds like a teenager. I know that she was voiced by a kid, but she sounds a lot older than the looks. It was the same problem as Zac Efron in The Lorax, but not as egregious.
This version of the Grinch expands on the source material in a similar fashion to what the Jim Carrey version did, but I'd say it works better here. It gives the Grinch a backstory, it show him interacting with the Whos more times than just when he robs them, it gives him a connection with Cindy-Lou Who. But one thing this movie does that I absolutely love is that it gives the Grinch a couple scenes where he starts feel remorse for his mean actions. It builds up this inner conflict with the character where he does these awful things but, deep down, he feels bad for them. It makes him changing his ways and returning the gifts back to the Whos at the end even more meaningful because he's been fighting these joyous feelings away for the whole movie, instead of it just being a heel-face turn that comes out of nowhere. The fact that the Grinch, while still a jerk, is a marginally better person in this movie is a very nice touch. He treats his dog a lot nicer, he sets the one reindeer he managed to find free when it's family shows up, and he smiles a good amount of times before the ending happens. Seeing the Grinch smile before the story says he has to was very nice. Some of the additions to the story in this movie are very welcome. But a lot of them aren't. There's a scene at the beginning where the Grinch wakes up in his bed and he has underwear on. It leads to an admittedly pretty funny joke where the Grinch puts on a pair of green pants that look just like the rest of his body, but the fact that he owns underwear implies that he has genitalia and that's not an image I want in my brain.
Also, good Lord, who's idea was it to have Pharrell narrate a Dr. Seuss movie? I like Pharrell, I really do, but I don't want him to narrate this movie. If you're gonna be the narrator in a Dr. Seuss movie, you have to have either possess a strong voice or be able to imitate one. Boris Karloff in the original Grinch, Anthony Hopkins in the Jim Carrey Grinch, Victor Brandt in that horrifying Mike Myers Cat in the Hat movie that we're not gonna talk about. If Cumberbatch had narrated the movie while also voicing the Grinch, it would've been a lot better. There's also the fact that he's never done voice acting once prior to being in this movie. I'm amazed how much it shows, as well. On the topic of out of place musicians, I didn't care for Tyler the Creator's cover of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch". He's a decent artist, but his version didn't really grab me. I just don't think the melody sounds very catchy. The Bob Malone version is pretty cool, though. I love the jazzy instrumental. There's an abundance of humor in this movie, too. Some of the jokes work, but most don't. There's a handful of cutaway gags that feel like something straight out of Family Guy. At one point, the Grinch runs out of food at his house. He says, "Have I really been stress-eating that much"?, and then it cuts to him devouring a gigantic plate full of spaghetti and meatballs. That was kinda funny. The Grinch getting decked in the jaw by an inflatable snowman was great, him using a mating call horn thing to try to attract some reindeer but coming across a goat instead was funny, and the goat itself was kinda funny for the first three seconds it was on-screen. It screams, cause that was a thing that was everywhere for a while. It got annoying very fast.
That can be said for a lot of the humor, truth be told. There's a lot of jokes that really don't work, but the kids in the audience I was in laughed as loud as they possibly could after all of them. The Grinch does butt workouts to get in shape for when he has to impersonate Santa Claus while he steals Christmas. It was very uncomfortable to watch. Another cutaway gag sees Max driving a Ferrari while the Grinch sticks his head out the window and acting like a dog. It got the kid behind me to start screaming, so that's something. There's this really unnecessary scene where the Grinch flees from carolers singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", which is kinda funny on it's own, but then the carolers start snapping their fingers and shuffling their feet like it was a West Side Story holiday episode. It didn't do anything for the movie except pad it's runtime. When we first see the Grinch, the movie does the joke where the guy that doesn't want to hear a specific song ends up hearing multiple different versions of that specific song in less than a minute. Y'know the one. Bedtime Stories did it, Zootopia did it, Shaun of the Dead did it, and, now, so has this movie. It's an okay joke, but it's very rarely done in a genuine funny way. This movie doesn't make it funny. It doesn't make a lot of things funny. For l lot of the jokes, I could predict what they were and when they would happen. For a comedy, that's not good. If the jokes are predictable, they aren't funny.
I will say that the ending was very sweet, though. The fact that the Grinch was given those human moments as the movie went along made the traditional ending even better. It's also different than what I was expecting. When the Grinch initially returns the presents back to the Whos, they don't immediately embrace him with open arms. He walks away and goes back to his home to think. The next morning, he gives Max a squeak toy as a Christmas present, showing that he's changed. Then Cindy-Lou Who knocks on his door and invites him to dinner. He has this very human moment where he stands outside the door of her house and hesitates to ring the bell because he fears that the people will hate him for what he's done. But they don't. They welcome him into their house, they let him carve the Who roast beast, and he gives a very well-written speech beforehand about how their kindness changed his life. It was very sweet. Major props to everyone involved with making the scene. And I also liked how the Grinch is shown to be an inventor throughout the movie. It made the scene of him putting together the fake Santa costume/sleigh in one night actually make sense. He creates a lot of cool contraptions that come in handy during the third act. They also look like things Dr. Suess himself would've made up for a book. This movie, all it's flaws aside, really does the Grinch right.
This movie is decent. I didn't get a lot of enjoyment out of it, but kids will. The theater I was in was packed full of parents and their kids, and they loved the movie. In that regard, the movie works. But, speaking as a kid that grew up with Dr. Seuss books, I didn't really care too much for this movie. The animation is amazing, Benedict Cumberbatch nails it as the Grinch, the character designs are great, but it fails in almost every other regard. I'm gonna give The Grinch a 6/10. I'd rather watch the Jim Carrey version again, but I didn't hate what I saw here. Probably won't buy it on DVD, though. If Illumination decides to do more Dr. Seuss movies, I would be interested to see what they do with them. I really wanted to see Bad Times at the El Royale, though. Sucks that I missed it.
