By
Graig Uhlin
Arizona Daily Wildcat
'Grinch' devolves into preachy pap
He's a mean one, that Mr. Grinch. He really is a heel. He's as cuddly as a cactus and as charming as an eel, as it were.
And his new film, "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas," is no better.
Granted, the film is treading on hallowed ground. Dr. Seuss has been all but canonized, and the 1966 cartoon version is beloved by anyone who owns a television. How could this update possibly improve upon what has come before?
Cast Jim Carrey as the ornery humbugger? A brilliant move, but not enough. Recreate the entire town of Whoville, complete with extensive costuming and makeup effects? Again, a good attempt, but it still falls short. Basically, this film can boast of no improvements - it has robbed the joy and cheer from its own Christmas.
Where the film goes horribly wrong is its decision to humanize the Grinch before his eleventh-hour, heart-expanding epiphany. In order to make the original story feature length, director Ron Howard (whose work is getting more tedious and uninspiring with each successive film) and screenwriters Jeffrey Price and Peter Seaman bore their audience with a contrived backstory about the Grinch's original ostracization from Whoville, which proves to be the origin of his deep-rooted hate for Christmas. They make the Grinch a victim, demystifying him in a common narrative trope of this therapy-obsessed culture where disobedience is automatically the result of childhood trauma.
The film, single-handedly, has destroyed the mythos of the Grinch. What used to be a sly and deviously underhanded representation of pure evil has been turned into a wise-cracking, face-contorting clown with a broken heart, who just needs the sympathetic outreach of a plucky Cindy Lou Who (Taylor Momsen) to be reformed.
And then it just gets worse. The film has, of course, the same uplifting message as the original story, but is endlessly preachy in its delivery. Cindy Lou coos her anti-commercialist messages so often throughout the film that one begins to understand why the Grinch hates the upbeat imp so much. Hollywood seems to have lost the ability to convey a message subtly. Moreover, one can hardly take an anti-commercialism message seriously from a blockbuster Jim Carrey film.
Hollywood has taken the classic Dr. Seuss tale about the famously disgruntled green man who learns the true meaning of Christmas and has turned it into the same commercial product that the film itself denounces.
Oh, the irony is almost too much to bear. Remember, everyone, Christmas is not about the gifts and the shopping, at least not until after you have bought your Grinch action figures.
The film, as it is clear by now, has some very bad moments. It is hard to leave this film, not thinking about what a colossal mistake these filmmakers have made, how they squandered a great opportunity - but, dammit, at least they entertain.
And it is all thanks to the man in the rubber suit. Jim Carrey turns in a phenomenal and hilarious performance, and while many of the scenes are obvious vehicles for him to do Grinch-related stand-up, at least these moments provide endurable, even enjoyable, portions for the film. Just watching the way Carrey gets lost in the role is gleeful fun, and without him, the film would not be worth a stocking full of coal.
So if there was a way that one could see Carrey flex his comic muscle without the saccharine narrative that falls between, that would have been a truly wonderful holiday gift. However, the best present to yourself is not to touch this movie with a 39 1/2 foot pole.
