The Grinch (2018)

Directed by Scott Mosier & Yarrow Cheney

Viewed in Theatre

 

Summary: Though it has slick animation and a good cast, this new entry to the Grinch franchise adds nothing and makes the story weirdly off-putting by turning Whoville into a Communist Ethnostate. Just watch the original.

 

I really wanted to wait until it was December proper to start reviewing Christmas related things, so I figured The Grinch would be a perfect fit to hold us all over until we get to some truly awful holiday schlock. I mean, this can’t be a Christmas film, right? It was released in November, before Thanksgiving, and I don’t see Christmas in the title, so let’s see what is going on in The Grinch! Little bit of a side note, this is a mildly historic occasion for me, because this is the first movie I’ve seen from the Illumination studio, the group behind movies like Despicable Me, Sing and another Seuss based adventure, The Lorax. Hey, they already have one Seuss movie under their belt, so this movie has to be good, right? Right???

Our story begins with the Grinch, a green haired (furred?) fellow who lives in a secluded mountain home with his only companion, a dog named Max. Grinch and Max are out of food though, so they mosey on down to the nearby town of Whoville for supplies, braving the cold and the omnipresent Christmas decorations (Damnit! Christmas IS in this movie! Oh well, I’m too invested to stop so I guess I’ll just keep going!) to buy some food. While the Grinch is down there he meets Cindy-Lou Who, a young Who girl who, in a rush to deliver an important letter to Santa to the mail carrier, bumps into the Grinch while chasing said mail carrier. This is just their first meeting though, as their intertwined destinies make certain that their paths cross again…at the end of the movie. Until we get there though, there’s plenty of time for slapstick, screaming goats, and under explained backstories to keep us busy!

So I’m going to be pretty snarky as this review goes on but I just want to explain one thing right off the bat, and that is that this movie is FINE. Not fine in the sense that it’s an okay movie, because it really really isn’t, but fine in the sense that it is a collection of sounds and moving visuals that might hold a child’s attention during the eighty six minutes that this movie plays in front of them. The kids in my theatre didn’t seem all that interested, I heard someone laugh maybe once, but maybe that was just an anomaly, maybe kids in other theatres are loving this movie. I accept that I’m no longer the target audience for this kind of movie. Now that that’s out of the way, let me tell you why The Grinch (2018) sucked.

Let’s start with something that just occurred to me as I was writing this, I had to look up the runtime and I am stunned that it was only eighty six minutes because The Grinch feels insanely long. Everything happens so slowly, scenes go on for so long, so much padding gets stuffed in, and all for a very obvious reason, the story, originally told in a children’s book and sub twenty five minute TV special, is a SHORT story, one that is really not suited to be feature length, and when you try and make that story feature length you have to add subplots and side plots to get it to a decent runtime. This would be fine if those side plots are interesting but they just aren’t. The main subplot involves Cindy-Lou Who asking for her mom, who is a single mom (no they never address if the dad is dead or a deadbeat or if her parents are just divorced), to have more free time. It’s sweet and a fine message but the movie treats her like she’s Who Jesus for noticing that her mom is always working.

Speaking of Donna Who always being at work, I need to discuss how Whoville is now a Communist Ethnostate. Money is never mentioned or seen, no one pays for anything that they buy, like wreaths or five hundred pound hams, so here’s my question, why is Donna Who working so much if no one uses money to buy things? Does she have a state mandated job that doesn’t care about her being a single mother of three children? That doesn’t care that it should maybe cut her hours so she can be with them? Why don’t these Whos, who we are told are so magical and wonderful and pure, do anything to help her? Speaking of the Whos not helping people, we learn the Grinch’s backstory, he hates Christmas because he was an orphan and there was never Christmas at the vacant orphanage that he grew up in. Why wasn’t young Grinch taken in by a Who family? Or given some of the town’s clearly excess Christmas decorations to display at the orphanage? Or given anyone to care for him at the orphanage because no one is ever there in his flashbacks? I’LL TELL YOU WHY. Because Whoville is a white ethnostate that has no place in it for Green people! These Whos knew Grinch was alone and needed help, but they stood by and did nothing because he was a little green thing.

 

Little Grinch wishing for Christmas. Or food. Or firewood. Any of the three, really.

 

Speaking of green, time to talk about the Grinch. This Grinch is not even a shadow of his former self. Gone are the days where the Grinch is an angry old man, growling at the noisy Whos who live down below. Gone are the days where the Grinch had three emotions, rage, barely contained rage, and smug satisfaction. Gone are the days where all the Grinch needed to burgle Christmas was a sleigh, some sacks and his massive balls. Now, the Grinch is soft, cute and round. He looks like a pouting plush toy, not the sometimes genuinely creepy villain that he was in the original story. He’s barely even mean anymore! Sure, he does some mean things, like pushing over the head of a kid’s snowman and purposely moving a jar to a higher shelf out of someone’s reach, but the majority of Grinch scenes are just him hanging out with Max, his dog who he unambiguously cares for and loves. Hell, after hurting Max’s feelings once, the Grinch APOLOGIZES to Max. The Grinch should never apologize to Max, or anyone for that matter, before he learns the true meaning of Christmas.

Everything about the Grinch has been made so goofy and harmless, even his voice. Benedict Cumberbatch voices the Grinch and it is not amazing. I don’t blame Cumberbatch though, because I’m sure he was just doing the voice they told him to do, I have no doubt that Cumberbatch could have done a creepier, more Grinchlike voice if he was asked, but instead of that he was told to read lines like a guy in his mid 20s who’s too edgy for the world around him. Less threatening, more just kind of grating. The requisite reimagining of ‘You’re A Mean One Mr. Grinch’, doesn’t even play when he’s doing something bad! It plays when he’s drinking coffee and taking a shower! It certainly doesn’t help that he’s treated like a goof and shown working out in hot pink pants that say ‘Go Time’ on the back.

 

If I had to see this, then so do you.

 

Really though, the bottom line is that The Grinch (2018) is so bland. Everything about it feels so formulaic and safe and committee designed. Sure, the animation is alright but it’s never used to make jokes or warm hearts or tell a story, it’s just kind of there. I can sit here and pick apart the bizarre mythology and economic systems of Whoville but that’s only because the story is so light and if I didn’t talk about that then there would be nothing to talk about. The bare bones ‘having a family/community is good’ message makes even less sense when it’s revealed that Grinch kid WANTED to be part of Whoville, WANTED to have a family, WANTED to celebrate Christmas, but he didn’t because presumably no one from Whoville wanted anything to do with him. Grinch should have been Whoville’s reckoning, but instead he bought into the very community that abandoned him. Wow, didn’t expect The Grinch to get me this passionate. If you can’t tell, I do not recommend this movie. Watch the original.