I pretty much expected this big-screen version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas to suck, and I wasn't disappointed. It sucked big time. I was actually in physical pain at some points (like during little Cindy Lou Who's aria). If you care at all for either the cartoon version or the book, do yourself a huge favor and skip this. The one part of the movie I thought might be interesting was the backstory on why the Grinch hates Christmas so much, but they come up with a tediously unimaginative explanation, and it doesn't even make sense. Seems the Grinch lived amongst the Whos as a Grinchling, but he had a big crush on a girl, and he was humiliated in front of her, and it happened to be at Christmas, so now he hates Christmas. Well, no, actually, he hates the Whos. Who the hell wouldn't? I mean, these obnoxious little twerps are always yowling about something -- in the cartoon, they were bad enough, but in this movie, they're even more repulsive and sickening. They dump their garbage at the Grinch's doorstep, make so much noise the poor creature has to resort to sticking his head between the cymbals of a really giant version of one of those monkeys that clashes cymbals (one of the few funny moments in the movie comes as Carrey turns on the monkey and roars grandly, "Play, monkey! Play!", like he was calling the Frankenstein monster to life, which appeared to amuse me and no one else, and by the way, believe me, I can sympathize with having neighbors so noisy you'd grind metal in your Cuisinart to drown them out), tease and torment him, and are generally icky, cutesy people who over-commercialize Christmas and have really disturbing faces with tiny little noses (though this bizarre make-up job actually improves Clint Howard's looks). Hmmm... cutesy... perky... icky... tiny nose... -- hey, Meg Ryan is a Who!
Anyway, point being that, if you take this explanation at face value, the Grinch has no particular feelings about Christmas one way or the other. He just hates the damn Whos. So when he comes to his Moment of Clarity© when he realizes, "Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store" -- well, he never did think it came from a store. It was those perky little fuckers down in Whoville who thought that, and when the Grinch is the one who shows you the true meaning of the holiday, well, now who's the mean one?
I always thought the Grinch got a bum rap, and I always thought the ending was not a happy one. In my version, the Whos pack up and move, leaving the Grinch to enjoy his beautiful mountain home in peace. I'm something of a Grinch myself; I was practically snarling when a woman with four kids, all under the age of ten, sat down right in front of us (actually, the kids were exceptionally well behaved; it was the mother who fidgeted and made noise all throughout the movie). I felt an even greater kinship with the Grinch when he read his schedule for the evening:
4:00 -- Wallow in self pity
4:30 -- Stare into the abyss
7:00 -- Dinner with me
7:30 -- Wrestle with my self loathing
See, he's not a mean one -- he's just clinically depressed! (I'll bet every Who down in Whoville is stuffed to the gills with Prozac or some other mood-enhancing substance. No one is that creepily cheerful without chemical support. What's in that "Who-hash" anyway?)
Carrey manages more personality and expression than you would think possible with that stifling Grinch costume. In fact, sometimes he makes the Jim Carrey of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective look restrained and understated (other times, though, his normal wacky improvisation seems to be smothered). He talks like a bizarre meld of Larry Flynt after he got shot and an American doing a really bad imitation of Sean Connery. The rest of the cast is uniformly bad -- at best, wasted in an inadequate role (Bill Irwin), and at worst, just plain creepy (nearly everyone else). In terms of the movie itself, not just the unsettlingly perky Whos, it's just badly done. The attempts at adult-oriented humor nearly always fall flat, and the outrageous stuff meant (I'm guessing) to grab kids' attention is shrill and tiring.
Now, if you haven't already realized what an awful, twisted, Grinchly person I am, I'm going to share one odd tidbit from the movie and our differing reactions to it. In one scene, at a Who party, all the guests drop their keys into a big glass bowl. My brother's first thought was that it was along the lines of the Keymaster in Say Anything -- that it was to keep guests from driving drunk. My first reaction? That it was a key party, like in The Ice Storm. How sick and wrong is that?
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