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- "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"
(Reviewed October 27, 2000)
- To truly appreciate what an accomplishment this movie is, try to imagine how screechingly, unwatchably awful it would have been if the Grinch had been played not by Jim Carrey
but
by Robin Williams. Not that this movie is a masterpiece, but when you think about how much worse it could have been with exactly the same script but Williams in the lead, appreciating its charms becomes
a
whole lot easier.
Carrey and the kid who plays Cindy Lou Who are the ones who had to carry this movie to make it work, and the amazing thing is what a good job they do. Carrey's asides are sometimes
laugh-out-loud funny (and regular readers will know that I am not a guy who is easily amused). At times, Carrey seems to be channeling Jack Nicholson's Joker, but that's not a bad thing.
Cindy
Lou has to be just about the cutest kid in the universe, and it is fun to watch her on the verge of cracking up in some of her scenes with Carrey. Kudos to the casting director for managing to find a little girl
who
won't make audiences think, "Oh, God, another phoney-baloney Hollywood kid who is nine-years-old-going-on-forty-five."
Ron Howard, not usually known for showing much imagination as a director, goes for a "Tim Burton lite" approach here that only becomes annoying when Carrey (or one of his younger Grinch
selves) is not on screen. For example, the non-Carrey scenes that featured Who townfolk going about their Whoville lives were almost as flat as the egregious live-action "Flintstones" movie. Jeffrey
Tambor
(Hank in the late, lamented "Larry Sanders Show") plays his role so broadly that he seems to have wandered in from that lousy TV adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland" a few years back, the one
where a bunch of C-list actors all mugged their way through their roles to the point where I finally went "Gaaaaack!" and had to turn the channel.
Much of the production design also was oddly
unimpressive. For all of the work that obviously went into constructing Whoville, the result looks too much like Disneyland's sterile Toontown attraction, instead of like the wild-and-woolly (and sometimes
grim-and-gritty) Dr. Seuss drawings. I kept looking at stuff and thinking, "I know I'm supposed to be think this set is as cool and convincing as Munchkinland, but it looks too much like a bunch of people
in
costumes and fake noses running around a Disney store at a mall." And why can't even a mega-buck movie like this one come up with fake snow that looks less like attic insulation? Crumpit Mountain,
where
the Grinch lives, is the best looking thing in the whole movie--but would have looked even better if it did not have that woeful fake-snow shortcoming. (File under "bizarre pet peeve.")
So how can
I
still recommend this movie? How can I, one of the harshest cinema-fare evaluators on the whole dang web, actually give it a "B?" Chalk it up to the Christmas spirit, but also to the fact that Jim Carrey is so
undeniably likable. I went into this movie with VERY low expectations (the TV ads make it look like another "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians," possibly the worst movie ever
made, and yes, I have seen "Plan 9 From Outer Space"). But Carrey is funny, Cindy Lou Who is consistently cute without being cloying, and the younger versions of the Grinch were great. Hell, I even
liked
the dog.
Back Row Grade: B
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