New Animated ‘Grinch’ is Groovy Green Kickoff to Holiday Movie Season
The Grinch
Starring the voices of Benedict Cumberbatch, Rashida Jones, Kenan Thompson & Cameron Seely
Directed by Scott Mosier & Yarrow Cheney
PG
You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch.
The perennial holiday pest has been a part of our pop culture since 1957, when Dr. Seuss introduced him in the storybook that quickly became a children’s classic. He’s been the star of a TV Christmas special (1966) narrated by horror icon Boris Karloff, a movie starring Jim Carrey (2000) and a Broadway musical (2006).
The latest version is a brisk, crisp, charming, 90-minute computer-animated romp from Illumination Entertainment, the same folks who gave us the Despicable Me franchise and the critically lauded The Secret Life of Pets. A groovy, green movie kickoff to the Christmas season, it will delight children and remind grown-ups why Dr. Seuss (author/illustrator Theodor Geisel, who died in 1991) still rocks.
Benedict Cumberbatch provides the voice of the Grinch, the grumpy, green grouch with a lifelong Yuletide bone to pick: He absolutely hates Christmas. He lives with his loyal dog, Max, otherwise alone in a craggy mountain lair above the teeming town of Whoville. And it’s really ruffling his fur that, down there, the merry folks are hustling, bustling, smiling and singing as they prep for yet another happy holiday.
The Whoville mayor (Angela Lansbury) has proclaimed that this year’s celebration will be three times bigger than ever before. That means a bigger tree, bigger ornaments, and more of everything. Grrrr—it also means the Grinch will have to come up with an even bigger plan to somehow ruin Christmas for everyone in Whoville.
Co-directors Scott Mosier and Yarrow Cheney keep things brisk, light and lively, fleshing out the familiar storyline with visual flair, additional characters and witty details that hew closely to the wildly creative imagination of Dr. Seuss’ curiously surreal illustrations and the spirit of inspired anarchy that ran throughout all his work. When the Grinch tells Max about his new “gizmos and gazmos,” he’s not kidding—and he uses them all in the nifty Christmas-stealing sequence as he sweeps, siphons and stows away every scrap of Christmas from every home in Whoville.
And of course, it wouldn’t be a story about the Grinch without Little Cindy Lou Who (voiced by Cameron Seely, who played Helen, the young daughter of P.T. Barnum in The Greatest Showman). The precocious tiny tot hatches a plot of her own—a ploy to trap Santa Claus on Christmas Eve—that accidentally provides a twisty, fateful encounter with the Grinch.
That’s Rashida Jones as the voice of Cindy Lou’s harried, overworked mom, and Saturday Night Live’s Kenan Thompson gets plenty of chuckles as the boisterously cheerful, lumber-jack-like Bricklebaum, who would certainly be a contender if TV’s The Great Christmas Light Fight ever rolled into Whoville.
Max the dog is a real scene-stealer, as is Fred, the extremely rotund reindeer the Grinch corrals to pull his sleigh. “Santa had eight,” the Grinch grumbles, sizing up Fred. “He looks like he ate the other seven.”
Grammy-winning musician and producer Pharrell Williams narrates, informing us that one of the reasons the Grinch is a frosty frump is because his “heart is two sizes too small.”
For several generations that grew up with the original TV version of the Grinch, there are a couple of musical touchstones—like when the Whos gathering around the (massive!) Christmas tree and lifting their voices in “Welcome Christmas,” or the theme song, “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” this time a new rap version by Tyler, the Creator, performed over the end credits.
New musical spices include the Grinch’s alarm clock, which pesters him each morning by playing snippets of holiday wake-up songs like “Feliz Navidad,” “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Listen for Buster Poindexter’s “Zat You Santa Claus?” and some rockin’ Christmas cuts from the Brian Setzer Orchestra. Max has a daydream to Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5.”
The movie’s big feat is finding the funny in the Grinch’s frumpiness. He’s a character who’s impossible to hate, especially when you get to know him—and learn the heartbreaking reason he’s the way he is. Kids will laugh, a lot, at his “childish,” sometimes slapstick antics, and be touched by the way he comes around—moved by the innocence and goodwill of a little, big-eyed girl—to embracing Christmas, family and friendship by the end of the movie.
And everyone’s heart, like that of the Grinch, will grow three times bigger by the time the Grinch gives a toast to “kindness, love and the things we need most.”
He may be green, but turns out he’s not so mean, after all.
In theaters Friday, Nov. 9, 2018
The Media Tourist 