I shared my views on Hocus Pocus and now I'll discuss another modern holiday perennial:
When I was a kid, we had a book about the Grinch who stole Christmas and a beloved animated TV special that was repeated every year. Now we have a whole Grinch-related film industry.
It all started when someone got the bright idea of doing a like-action Grinch movie. And it starred Jim Carrey who, apparently, got the job because he could do the Grinch's wicked smile without CGI.
I remember having mixed feelings about the movie when I heard about it. The book is 64 pages long. And frankly, most of them are white space. The animated TV show was only 30 minutes (less commercials). How are you going to get a full-length motion picture out of that?
Easy! You pad it with subplots and turn the story upside down. And toss in an attempted top-40 Christmas song.
When I was a kid, we had a book about the Grinch who stole Christmas and a beloved animated TV special that was repeated every year. Now we have a whole Grinch-related film industry.
It all started when someone got the bright idea of doing a like-action Grinch movie. And it starred Jim Carrey who, apparently, got the job because he could do the Grinch's wicked smile without CGI.
I remember having mixed feelings about the movie when I heard about it. The book is 64 pages long. And frankly, most of them are white space. The animated TV show was only 30 minutes (less commercials). How are you going to get a full-length motion picture out of that?
Easy! You pad it with subplots and turn the story upside down. And toss in an attempted top-40 Christmas song.
When the movie came out, I went from mixed feelings to ill feelings. Jim Carrey was insane, but we all expected that. But they turned the tale on its head by making the Whos down in Whoville into the exact kind of greedy and consumeristic capitalists that the book preached against. They whole point was the Grinch was annoyed by niceness and kindness. In this version, the Whos kind of had it coming.
We get a Grinch origin story. We get an out-of-control Christmas light contest. We get a feckless mayor who seems to be out to take over the Who-fest and we get Ron Howard's brother, Clint, who is contractually obligated to appear in all Ron Howard movies. And we have the term "bitchin'" introduced into the lexicon of family movies.
They took everything I loved about the story and pumped it up on steroids until it wasn't. They make enough trips back and forth between Whoville and the Grinch's Mt. Crumpit Cave to earn them all airline miles. The Grinch sneaks into town multiple times, not just Christmas Eve. And gets tricked into being named the grandmaster of the Who-fest, which literally makes him sick. There's just a lot of bad blood between the Whos and the Grinch. And it's a over a girl, mostly.
We get a Grinch origin story. We get an out-of-control Christmas light contest. We get a feckless mayor who seems to be out to take over the Who-fest and we get Ron Howard's brother, Clint, who is contractually obligated to appear in all Ron Howard movies. And we have the term "bitchin'" introduced into the lexicon of family movies.
They took everything I loved about the story and pumped it up on steroids until it wasn't. They make enough trips back and forth between Whoville and the Grinch's Mt. Crumpit Cave to earn them all airline miles. The Grinch sneaks into town multiple times, not just Christmas Eve. And gets tricked into being named the grandmaster of the Who-fest, which literally makes him sick. There's just a lot of bad blood between the Whos and the Grinch. And it's a over a girl, mostly.
Nowadays, I usually see the movie as it pops up on one channel or another's holiday film countdown festival marathon. I've made a point to think of it as a Jim Carrey vehicle, a parody of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and that seriously helps me get through it now. I mean, he's meta about his behavior. He goofs on the songs as lifted from the TV version. And he parodies Ron Howard in one scene. And the song "Where are you Christmas?" is nice.
It's just amazing how the Carrey Grinch has drowned out any earlier versions, based on visits to the mall or Universal Studios theme parks. There are a lot of guys out there in green felt doing Jim Carrey these days to this day.
It's just amazing how the Carrey Grinch has drowned out any earlier versions, based on visits to the mall or Universal Studios theme parks. There are a lot of guys out there in green felt doing Jim Carrey these days to this day.
It's become one of those millennial film classics (like Hocus Pocus) that tried to fit an old-fashion story into a new-fangled Hollywood movie template. Obviously, they next step was CGI. And that Grinch, I didn't like. It answers the age-old question; What if the "Minions" guys decided to do a Grinch movie? I mean, they had to introduce a wacky reindeer for comic relief? Excuse me, that's Max's job! Bah-humbug to these two.
