The Grinch (2018)

(On Cable TV, June 2019) When it comes to Christmas movies, I’ve grown accustomed to as much repetition as Christmas songs—replay them, remake them—I must have seen five different version of A Christmas Carol during December 2018 alone. So, I’m not overly bothered by seeing a third version of The Grinch—I (surprisingly!) didn’t care all that much about the 1968 Boris Karloff one, and was only cautiously positive about the 2000 Jim Carrey one. The reason why this version of The Grinch isn’t as useless as most remakes is that Dr. Seuss’s colourful imagination is far better suited to computer animation than live-action (as shown by at least two other CGI-Seuss features), and so there’s a lot of material for the 2018 version to explore. The result is surprisingly … pleasant. The characters aren’t as grotesque as the live-action version, and directors Scott Mosier and Yarrow Cheney clearly have a lot of fun finding madcap details to stuff in the thin original story. Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance as the Grinch is fine, but it’s a more daring choice to use Pharrell Williams as the narrator. The musical cues are also interesting, going for a slightly newer sampling (“Christmas in Hollis,” Brian Setzer Orchestra’s “Jingle Bells,” Pentatonix, etc.) than the classics. Some of the slapstick gags are genuinely amusing, and the film does manage to shift the Grinch’s opinion of Christmas in a not-too-sappy way (although the ending does drag on a bit). I suspect that seeing the film in June, away from the glut of Xmas madness, may have helped more than hindered. It’s always risky to predict what Christmas film will endure or not, but there’s a good chance that The Grinch will get a lot of play over the next few years. Considering how enjoyable the film is, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.