Who is the brainiac who had the rights to adapt one of the most beautifully and cleverly written poems in pop culture and decided to cut out big chunks of that brilliance and replace it with subpar rhymes and forgettable catch phrases? Who takes a classic story dissecting modernity's obsession with pessimism and misanthropy and churns it into a simplistic story of loneliness?
You have the rights to tell the frickin Grinch! You don't go and change it so that it is about something else?
How hard is it??
The 2000 live action version of the Grinch also completely misunderstood the story. It reversed the characters so that it was the Whos who were missing the point of Christmas. It was so obsessed with letting Jim Carrey do the Jim Carrey shtick that it forgot it was about the Grinch. I was ready to see if a new adaptation could actually capture what Seuss' story was about.
But I shouldn't have got my hopes up. Illumination Animation studios makes the most pedestrian of animated movies of any of the major American animation studios and have already screwed up The Lorax. Not that Blue Sky Animation Studios did any better with Horton Hears a Who. I stand corrected. Illumination is second in pedestrainess to Blue Sky... but I digress...
Illumination's The Grinch is a rather lonely but lovable fella and has none of the sinister quality the Suess' character. His story is filled with pratfalls which aren't as funny as they should be, and none of the subversiveness of Suess' story or the originality of Chuck Jones' take. Illumination is a one trick pony. They've taken Cindy Lou Who and basically made her Agnes from Despicable Me. None of this is the story of the Grinch. It's fairly disposable Hallmark Channel Christmas movie BS.
But the biggest mystery is why they took the writing of Suess out of the story and put in their very poorman's version in instead. There was a film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet a few years back which decided to jettison Shakepeare's writing in exchange for putting in modern language. Watching The Grinch I was reminded of just what a bad decision that was.
The Grinch is the kind of film that will make a lot of money today but will be fairly forgotten in the years to come, while generations will return to Chuck Jones' spot on adaptation for all the brilliance it captures. This one is just today's fly by night flavour of the month.
I'm going to go watch the real adaptation now to wash this flavour out of my mouth.
The Grinch
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Rashida Jones, Kenan Thompson, Angela Lansbury, Pharrell Williams
Directors: Scott Mosier, Yarrow Chaney
Writers: Michael LeSieur, Tommy Swerdlow
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