Review of The Grinch (2018) by Beth S — 16 Dec 2018

The second go at a twenty-first century feature-length Grinch movie is a thoroughly, spectacularly bland movie. This mediocre enterprise barely stretches to feature length at 86 minutes and it lacks the charm of the original Dr. Seuss cartoon. Benedict Cumberbatch voices the green recluse with his three-sizes-too-small heart set on stealing the Christmas celebration of others. That's great casting, but why is he settling for his Doctor Strange-style American voice? The man has such a natural, rich, velvety voice. Another miscue is the fact that this Grinch isn't really feared by the people of Whoville. He lives just outside of ton and isn't really that mean. He's less a villain and more just a grumpy sad guy who has to over explain everything for the audience to understand ("I thought stealing Christmas would make me feel better, but really I was running from myself..."). This movie is brightly colored and nicely animated but it's strictly just for little kids. The lessons are pretty simplistic. The characters are mostly annoying, precocious, or mute. The humor is mostly slapstick. There is nothing to engage bigger thinkers. This Grinch movie actually made me start re-evaluating the 2000 Ron Howard version, which at least tried something and had an enjoyably hammy Jim Carrey performance with some creepy good makeup prosthetics, and I didn't even like that movie. The new animated Grinch film is inoffensively lackluster. At best it's a disposable 90 minutes to distract easily distractible children and give mom and dad time for a nap.

Nate's Grade: C.