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Ron Howard's How The Grinch Stole Christmas is making gobs of money as we speak. Tons of it. It's the biggest opener over a 3 day weekend ever. The killing best be made now because once the holiday gluttony is over, we won't hear of it again until the commemorative "Wholiday" DVD with deleted scenes is issued. Some mathematical calculations. It takes roughly 10-15 minutes to read the Dr. Seuss' beloved tale. The 1966 cartoon directed by Chuck Jones is around a half hour. How they managed to lengthen it you do not wish to know. If you haven't seen it, you still have time to save yourself. Rent the animated version instead. For anyone who has time to kill and wants to know, the Modern Grinch 2000's motivation comes from being ridiculed in his youth for being green and hairy in front of his true love. This indignity lead him to scurry up an isolated garbage dump to live out his years with his faithful dog Max. I see a problem with focusing on young Grinchlet. One, is the obvious filler needed to stretch out Seuss' story to the requisite blockbuster time of 1 hr 45 min. I know you need to flesh it out, but this? What's next, Dracula's formative years or the Alien's adolescence? Of course childhood development is important, in the movies, especially blockbuster ones, some people are just assholes. The Grinch looks oddly like the cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz. Except he's green, so maybe he had a roll in the hay with the Wicked Witch. Jim Carrey certainly gives The Grinch zip and some funny one liners, but it's not enough. Also, given that the people from Whoville are much, much uglier than The Grinch with their grotesque pig snouts, it's hard to sympathize with them. I'd rather be with the Grinch eating onions. In fact, I'd rather eat glass. Since Carrey IS the film, when he's not around it's hard to focus on anything. A set that looks like a candy cane factory exploded may have something to do with it. Howard wasn't able to give it the "look" and feel that Tim Burton or Julie Taymor (Titus, The Lion King) could have . Replacing Boris Karloff with Hannibal Lector as narrator was not the best move either. Yes, you want dark, but in an old fashioned ghoulish sort of way. Not in a sew-up-my-victims-skins sort of way. I think James Earl Jones could have given it that depth. Taylor Momsen as Cindy Lou Who as the girl who believes the Grinch is good despite what everyone says is fine as earnest little girls go, but really they should have deleted her singing scene. Her rendition of "Where are you, Christmas?" made me ask where my earmuffs where and what the quickest route to the top of the Grinch's garbage dump was. There are a few genuinely funny scenes, such as Cindy Lou trying to convince Grinch to come down for the Cheermeister and his reasons for not doing so given his busy schedule (which includes wallowing in self pity, staring at the abyss, and jazzercize). Christine Baranski, who was so funny in Bowfinger, is also funny here. A slight reference to a seventies swinging party was made—dropping of keys in a jar—but that seemed more out of place than funny. In the end though, it won't matter that this isn't a good movie. Big money has been made. The Grinch may have stolen Christmas, but we have definitely been robbed.
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