Illumination studios, of the pain you have caused. To be fair to the studio, I personally have no real hard feelings towards the studio. The only film I had seen before watching ‘The Grinch’ (2018) was ‘Despicable Me’ (2010) which I thought was fine. But the studio does not have a particular great reception, possibly because the unleashed the dreaded Minions on to the world. Regardless I did go into this film with an open mind. After all, it’s ‘The Grinch’, a classic story so at least the filmmakers had a good base, to begin with. Let’s see what they did with it. The film tells the story of the Grinch (Benedict Cumberbatch. He lives on top of a mountain that overlooks Whoville, a town that loves Christmas. This is a problem because the Grinch hates Christmas, and when the town decides to have the biggest Christmas ever, he decides enough is enough and he sets about to steal Christmas.
I can now see why people dislike this studio. I really didn’t like this film. First of all, I do not like the animation or visual style of the film, which is a major problem for an animated film. There are a couple of nice shots at times, but mostly it is just really, really bland. And I mean that the character design in this film is dull as dishwater. It just feels too ‘clean’ and like it is trying its best to be cute, which it most likely is, but it does nothing for the quality of the visuals. Narratively it is fine seeing as it is based on a classic story, but the issue with this comes from the fact that it needs to stretch this narrative out to hit feature runtime and so there are several tacked on scenes that are not needed and do absolutely nothing for the film. And then we have the performances which are also pretty poor across the board. Cameron Seely plays Cindy-Lou Who and for some reason, her performance felt completely monotone to me, with the film going for what felt like a cute vibe rather than trying to get a good, rounded performance. Pharrell Williams is the narrator of the film and my god was he putting me to sleep. He himself sounded half asleep the majority of the time. Rashida Jones is probably the standout performance in the film. That isn’t saying much, but at least I believed what her character was saying was genuine. And then, of course, we have Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular Grinch. I like him as an actor o the whole, but I don’t know what he is doing here. He is definitely trying so I can say that for him, but the voice he goes for is grating and doesn’t fit at all. And not fitting at all is pretty par for the course for this film.
What made me really dislike this film was its insistence on dropping real-world reverences into this animated film about the Grinch and passing that off as comedy. There is a part where the Grinch plays ‘All by Myself’ o the organ because its funny to see him play a song from the real world right? It is just laziness really. If you can’t think of a genuine joke just put a pop culture reference in there. There was one moment in the film, which was quite a funny visual gag, but apart from that it is not funny in the slightest and just annoyed me. The big all-encompassing issue with the film is that it is made entirely for little kids to enjoy with plenty of movement and dumb jokes thrown in to keep their attention. You might think this isn’t a problem, but that is where you are wrong. Maybe it is just my view of films, but you can make a film targeted at kids and still have mass appeal. Disney and Pixar are the kings of this. This film is made entirely for only small children to enjoy and that is why it feels so lazy. Without being too offensive to kids, they are stupid and easily entertained and this film knows it. And so it just does cookie-cutter shite that will make it its money back without having to be good. Maybe I am being very harsh, but I don’t think so.
I didn’t quite realise how much resentment I had towards ‘The Grinch’ until I started writing this. It isn’t anything like one of the worst films I have ever seen (it isn’t even the worst film I have seen for these Christmas reviews) but there is something about it that really rubbed me the wrong way. I think it is the pure laziness that is seemingly pouring out of the film in almost every aspect. Of course, I am going to tell you to avoid this film. There is almost nothing redeeming about it for me. I say almost because it is really short, so the pain doesn’t last too long.
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