LogFAQs > #961922146

31. The Grinch

Ermine: 8
Karo: 21
Inviso: 22
Red: 29
Johnbobb: 36
Evillord: 39

Total: 155

Ermine: This movie plays it INCREDIBLY safe in a way that is almost shameless but the highs of this film are too much for me to pass up. I absolutely love Welcome Christmas as a song and really enjoy the versions of it in this movie. It dials up the emotion and just christmasy feel up to eleven whenever it plays and I wish they just went a BIT further with it in that way. That version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen was actually pretty fun too, along with that scene.

This is also by far the best Max the dog has ever been. Holy moly did he steal the show for me. What an adorable pupper who deserves all the love. I would have loved to see his relationship with the Grinch a bit more but alas.

Cindy Lou sucks but she always has and the plot/subplot with the kids is just wholly uninteresting. It's a bit of a shame since there's a lot here that hits for me, but a ton that really doesn't and brings the rest of it down. Still fun.

Karo: The latest animated adaptation of the tale of the mean green guy with the undersized blood pump.
Things go pretty much how you would expect, the Grinch hates christmas, wants to steal it, etc, though they do a pretty good job making the Grinch seem human (or whatever he is supposed to be), rather than just some cackling cartoon villain.
The way the main characters behave quite similarly to certain individuals from Despicable Me is quite noticeable and somewhat distracting. You're a mean one, Mr Gru.
There is a lot of fluff in the middle of the movie to pad out the runtime of a story that wasnt really meant to be feature length, and this part of the film really drags on. It is neither original or exceptional, but it is still quite touching, and mercifully Jim Carrey is nowhere to be found.

Inviso: Obviously, the original Grinch (the short TV special based almost verbatim on the Dr. Seuss book) is a classic. This is fine, even though it does run into a lot of the pitfalls inherent in translating a short childrens book into a feature-length film. Theres a lot of filler in terms of building up Whoville as a Christmas village, or Cindy Lou Who as a character of ANY kind (and her subplot about trapping Santa to ask him to help her momwhich is fine in the context of a feature film I guess), or adding an unnecessary reindeer character. But ultimately, the movie is about the sentimentality of Christmas and the Grinch learning about the Christmas spirit and how its more about being with people you care about than the commercialism of the holiday. It is weird hearing them sing Christmas carols, because that implies that the world where these strange Whovillians exist is the same as our world, where Jesus Christ is a thing. Also, Max is absolutely adorable in this, and he is the goodest boy.

Red: In the land of sequels we have a remake. A remake of something that already had a remake even. Have you seen The Grinch before? Yeah, you have? Well congrats because you've seen this movie before. The big problem is that everything this brings new to the script ends up going nowhere and you get the exact ending you've probably seen a hundred times around Christmas before. They had a chance to leave us with more developed characters than either of the prior Grinch movies and then nope. The Grinch just isn't grinchy enough and it makes the ending feel weird and the Grinch less organic.

Johnbobb: why does this exist? who in their right mind thought this needed to exist? It's just How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but longer, uglier, and overall worse.

Evillord: Predictably, this feels like the 20-minute special stretched to feature length that it is, and the extra time is filled with Illumination's hackneyed and boring tropes. At the risk of overanalyzing something so stupid, the big problem with this (and the Jim Carrey Grinch) is that making the Grinch this sad and misunderstood villain is missing the point. The Grinch is a story about redemption that shows how even the world's biggest jerk can learn not to be so shitty if he tries. That doesn't work if he's a secretly nice guy who just needs love.