Grinchy Watch: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)

Watched:  12/16/2022

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2000's

Director:  Ron Howard

People love this movie.  I was aware of that, but had no interest in the film when it came out. I'd read the book a lot as a kid, and I'm a purist when it comes to Chuck Jones and my enjoyment of his work.  And aside from some of the finest Looney Tunes installments, the annual TV special of How the Grinch Stole Christmas was his signature work.  As a collaborative work (Jones, Seuss, Karloff, Ravenscroft, Poddany) it's hard to top.

Director Ron Howard never saw a project he couldn't make more mediocre by running it through his Hollywoodtron-3000.  He understands the beats of movies, and deploys bombastic music and whatnot to get the audience on board as he takes them through their paces, but the movies always wind up feeling hollow and less than the sum of their parts.  Yes, I know he was funny on Arrested Development.  But I don't know how you take The Grinch and make a faux Tim Burton film that also manages to reframe the original story to such a degree that you miss the point of a children's book.

Look, part of the joke of the original Grinch book is that he's just a bastard.  No one made him that way.  We can speculate about shoe sizes and head fittings, but as far as we're concerned, he's just the local jerk who watches from afar.  He simply is.  But the original book is 64 pages, with a few sentences per page and lots of art.  The movie needs a decent runtime, and so the filmmakers (and Howard is a director, but he's also basically a producer) padded and padded and padded some more!  They padded this out til their padders were sore!

I mean, they had to pad the book for a 20-something minute cartoon version of the book.  

So - we get a backstory for the Grinch where we see maybe it's nature that the Grinch is an asshole, but also it turns out those harmless Who's in Whoville are frightened, judgy assholes who elect the worst of them to run things.  

The movie wants to make a point about how the goal of Christmas is not the presents and garland and all the trimmings - the point made by the book - but it spends 95 minutes telling us otherwise and only one Who and her dad immediately feels this way and Dad has to give a speech to get everyone on board.  We are in full "whipping up an angry mob on A CHILD" territory when the speech is delivered.  

There are multiple other ways to get the Who's to the point of singing around the tree, and this is maybe the worst one?  

But, yeah, by giving us the Grinch's backstory in which he's a bit of an outsider and skeptical of Who-ways, and is humiliated for his first chance to reach out and belong, (a) I'm not clear on how to feel that he runs away from home after a single bad experience, (b) when his adoptive mothers don't walk up a steep hill to come check on him in decades and (c) he is now basically set up to be kinda right about thinking the Whos suck.  Because they do.  

Unlike the book, The Grinch is not just a bastard who hates Christmas because it's for simps and kids - it was weaponized to hurt him, not once but twice.  And on the second round, when he comes down to give the Who's a shot, they all jointly are either messing with him or enabling the a-holes.  This movie is not about someone not getting it and then getting it, it's about a whole bunch of people at odds with each other, and it takes place at Christmas.

Weird flex, Ron.  

The point of the Grinch changing his mind in the book and cartoon is a man-v-himself.  He's lived up on that mountain away from society happy to literally look down upon the Whos and made up a whole bunch of assumptions about what the Who's are up to on Christmas as he looks at it from the outside.  This movie makes it Man-v-Who, because he's seen it up close, and he's seen that he's not wrong - aside from Cindy Lou and Lou Who, their Christmas really is about the gifts and roast beast, and the Whos ARE actually that devastated.  This movie essentially reframes the central conflict, resolution and point of the book into a new and far more trite story.  It's not a story about self-realization and growth, it's about capitulation and forgiveness of your tormentors because Christmas.  And if you're going to tell that story, this is a pretty bad way to do it.  Nothing is particularly earned, and the Grinch's revelation atop the mountain with all that stuff seems unfounded.  

The idea of the book is that the decorations and partying is just a way to show the spirit of the season.  In Ron Howard's view, that stuff is what's up front.  An underutilized Molly Shannon and Christine Baranski show how the Who's really have forgotten and it's all about competing with the Joneses.  Its rushing about and presents and politicians blustering in front of crowds. Fairly standard Hollywoof-Hates-Christmas stuff.  

To further fill the time, we're given just an ungodly amount of time watching Jim Carrey improvise as the Grinch, mostly talking to himself in dark rooms (more on that soon).  Weirdly, this is more enjoyable than watching people in Who make-up stand around or "dash about because Christmas".  Carrey is a lot, and so its really up to Howard to work with editors and choose what to keep in the film, and the answer seemed to be "keep all of it".  

Aesthetically, the movie looks like Seuss by way of Burton, but someone who doesn't understand how those aesthetics work.  Of the things I was expecting "permanent midnight Whoville" was not among them.  Why make the wonderful and colorful world of the Who's and then make it lit like we're in Halloweentown?   I get that this is supposed to be the shortest days of the year, but it's also mites living on a snowflake.  I think we're past worrying about the relative position of the Earth and sun.  Give me some color, for chrissake.  This isn't a CGI movie, it's largely practical.

But throw in the (sigh) very 2000-era decision to *constantly* keep the camera moving, which kinda has a POV that is intended to feel topsy turvy, but more feels like the POV of someone on their fourth cocktail.  It's actually very annoying and one of those dumb tricks that's fine if used sparingly, but this is not that.  This is "you like sugar?  Here's a pound of sugar I'll watch you eat."

In my pitch for the Friday Watch Party, I made comments about being confused by Martha May Whovier, played by Christine Baranski.  Well, I've seen the film, and I'm still at a bit of a loss, and it makes me wonder how much was left on the cutting room floor despite the 1:45 runtime.  Yes, we get backstory that Martha May as a pre-teen was crushing on the Grinch (I'll go with it).  But essentially it turns her into the prize to be won between The Mayor (Tambor) and the Grinch, who has no idea Martha May is carrying a torch for him.  It's all very lazy and a reminder of the last gasp of 20th century movies where heroes get the girl for completely unrelated reasons, and the girl is a trophy to be won.  It's... a twist on the original story, certainly.  

But Martha May and Mary Lou Who (Shannon) also seem to have some one-sided rivalry going on with Christmas lights, and that goes nowhere.  We never really hear from Martha May what her deal is.  She's just there to be human looking (I think the only Who-styling she has are some very subtle fake teeth) and aside from that - she's Baranski in pin-up/ glamour styling.  

is not

In those "Grinch: Origins" portions of the film, the kid who would become mayor humiliates the Grinch not just for sport, but because he seems him as the obvious rival to Martha May's affections. And this continues into everyone's adulthood.

I can both totally get what the thinking was (ha ha!  Sexy Who!) and can't figure out why it's so anemic other than that it's a flourish on top of everything else and no one could be bothered.  Nor can I figure out why you get someone who was as established as Baranski was by 2000 and then give her like 4 lines.  It's called giving your female characters agency, Ron.

But Baranski looks fabulous.  It would have been great if they'd just given her actual dialog.

Sure, I'm distracted a bit by the Hot Who question, but it's indicative of the sort of thinking that seems to have permeated the movie.  Who was Martha May Whovier for?  Me?  Thanks, I guess.  

But this is my beef with Howard.  It feels like something imported from another movie.  Why is there sexual jealousy in a Grinch movie?  Especially when it undercuts the semi-weighty story of the original text.  There's no real thought or imagination about it, it's just recycling bits from other movies, with the only thing interesting about it being Carrey's frankly amazing make-up and performance through the make-up.  He's really pretty good here despite it all.

Anyway - all of the reasons I wasn't interested in this movie in 2000 turned out to be accurate.  I couldn't even enjoy the design or bringing Whoville to life, because it was lit like a carnival dark ride and all the backstory winds up detracting from the point of the book.  Don't do this, kids.  If you're going to expand on a slim volume, write down what the point of the book is and make sure everything new feeds into that idea.