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The Grinch Movie Review

The Grinch is a 2018 animated family film from Illumination directed by Scott Mosier and starring Benedict Cumberbatch. It’s an okay movie that has many problems.

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“It was me. I stole your Christmas.

I stole it because I thought it would fix

something from the past. But it didn’t“

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It’s another adaptation of the famous Dr. Seuss story in which the titular character is grumpy and unhappy and tries to steal everybody’s Christmas. It was previously adapted into a much superior 1967 animated short and in that medium this story rests the best. Yes, this story is way too thin and short for a feature-length treatment and thus what we got here was a very prolonged, needlessly slow and padding flick.

Most of its scenes are unnecessary, slow and slapstick comedy-like in approach, but not particularly funny in execution. Literally, the only important scenes here are the beginning and the ending with a few scenes in between. The rest is one major filler which isn’t funny or adventurous enough to get me interested in it.

I liked its ending as it was charming and sweet, the beginning also set the story up pretty well, but the rest of the film needed a bigger momentum as the Grinch himself is simply way too safe and good. He needed to have been more evil and his schemes needed to have been much more devious for it to be satisfactory to adults instead of just children. And Cumberbatch’s American voice is too odd and not particularly strong for this type of animated role.

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And maybe the movie would have been better had it focused just on Grinch and Max as the kids themselves are so incredibly annoying that they really hurt the movie. Cindy Lou is simply too much of a goody two shoes and her quest to help her mother felt overly unrealistic to me. Her relationship with the protagonist was well done, but the other kids are annoying and the humans overall are really not all that interesting to me, at least in this particular film.

But Max is awesome, there is no denying that. This dog is incredibly cute first and foremost, but also a lot is conveyed through his facial expressions alone and he’s very emotive and expressive as a character. His relationship with the Grinch is the heart and soul of the film and the only part of the movie which really worked tremendously. The rest of the animals not so much.

The other standout aspect here is of course the animation. Illumination just knows how to animate their movies and make them vastly appealing to the majority of people and here they surely outdid themselves. The snow looks awesome, the decorations are lovely and the entire town of Whoville is gorgeously imagined and ultimately immensely cozy. The movements of the characters are also strong and the interiors are superb of the houses and especially of the Grinch’s house, all of his machinations and the mountain top itself. All of it looked great that I wish that the movie surrounding them was as good.

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The Grinch features a very problematic score with an unfortunate reliance on hip-hop which hurt its timeless appeal. The same could be said for the narration which simply did not fit as well here as it did in the original. The dialogue is also overly safe and childish, the action is uninspired and the movie just lacked the sort of mischievousness and evil spirit that this story desperately needed. Illumination really needs to step up their game when it comes to storytelling in particular.

The Grinch features outstanding, charming and immensely cozy animation which is pleasingly colorful and containing great interiors. The beginning and ending are also pretty good and I just loved Max the dog who’s so cute and is the heart of the film. But the titular character needed more edge, the movie’s overly safe and uninspired plus this thin story was just never intended for a feature-length treatment leading to a lot of padding and fillers in the end product.

My Rating – 3