Erik Jimenez/Staff Writer
The classic children’s books of Dr. Seuss have always been difficult to adapt to screen. Their best versions were usually half-hour specials that aired on television. Their worst ultimately go to the big screen.
From the mediocre “Horton Hears A Who” to the near Suess-killing cancers that are the live-action “Cat in the Hat” and the blatant, Mazda advert “The Lorax”. The best film adaptation so far—though not by a longshot and mainly due to childhood nostalgia—has to be the live-action Grinch film from 2000 starring Jim Carrey and directed by Ron Howard.
And while it has its flaws, after walking out of the newest animated film based on “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” by Illumination Entertainment (the same studio behind “The Lorax” and the “Despicable Me”), Howard’s Edgily Flawed flick looks like a masterpiece compared to this new drivel.
The film is an example of how to waste practically every single good thing that one is afforded to make a great Grinch movie. For example, Benedict Cumberbatch supposedly voices the titular character. I say supposedly because if anyone today can voice the Grinch and compare him to the bitter and dulcet tones of Boris Karloff (who voiced the Grinch in the Chuck Jones animated Christmas Special from the 60’s) it’s Cumberbatch.
But instead of Cumberbatch’s normal voice, it’s instead more a snooty American-waiter accent that makes the Grinch less of a monster and more of a grumpy neighbor. Forget a furry Frankenstein, the writers turned the Grinch into Squidward from SpongeBob!
And even then, he’s not all that evil. While he does plan to steal Christmas rather early on in the film, he treats his dog Max and another cute animal Fred, a fat reindeer, better than before. He can’t even keep Fred on his side as he immediately lets him go when he sees he has a family.
This Grinch is toothless. The whole point of the story is that he is supposed to be a menace to society until the end of the story, yet the film, through these actions, makes it feel as if the Grinch is only doing this because he suffers from terrible mood swings.
Pharrell is behind the narration and the song, “You’re a mean one Mr. Grinch”, and it doesn’t appear once in any form aside from an awful rap version in the beginning by Tyler the Creator (that sounds like a drunk person in the shower mumbling and forgetting the lyrics).
It actually focuses less on the Grinch’s redemption in this film than either the Howard film or the Jones Special ever did. Howard and the rest of the creators managed to make his change feel pointless and so sudden, they actually cut out the infamous “packages, boxes and bags” speech.
Even the 2000 adaptation managed to do that scene right.
Despite the gorgeous animation, the story is so bare bones that whatever story flaws the Howard film had, if you cut out the racier jokes and turned the film animated with this level of skill and craftsmanship you would have a genuinely solid Grinch film.
I could go on but I only have so much space and you only have so much time, but at the end of the day, Illumination had the opportunity to fix what was broken with Howard and deliver us Seuss fans a present we deserve—an actual decent Dr. Seuss movie.
Instead we got coal… again.
Photo by Humhum Sumtin on Flickr.
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