Hey folks, Harry here with Superspy Marlon Brando's look at HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS. Hmmmm, seems that Ron decided to take this print on down to Lo Jolla and tested it right away. Sneaky Ron, thought you'd do a real quick screening while my back was turned eh? hehehehe... Well, seems like the movie his MB just like it did me and Moriarty. Man, people are going to dig this film. Here's the report...
Harry, I had the privilege of seeing the Grinch movie tonight here in La Jolla, California - but with an added bonus. Opie Cunningham graced this surfer town with his presence and gave a short speech on it not being completely final before it started. Why'd he pick San Diego? Beats the shit out of me but I felt so cool sitting in that theatre and having the opportunity to see something very few had seen. But I have to tell you I didn't expect what I saw.
If you're like me you definitely grew up with the Grinch cartoon around Christmas time. Where I grew up, there was always certain "specials" around a given holiday: The Wizard of Oz was always around Easter, Twilight Zone marathons around Thanksgiving and a butt load of claymation, animation and the Grinch around Christmas. I looked forward to these specials around each holiday as much as I looked forward to looking at Grandpa's classic Playboys around each holiday. But the Grinch was always one of my favorites. Nothing beat that classic animation with such a simple storyline. It would never get old to me and I look forward to watching it with my kids in the future.
However, this Grinch movie is no cartoon. Now I've seen the pictures you have had up on the site in the past, and I wondered how Universal was going to get children into the theater to see this. Come on. That photo of the grinch smiling looked even too creepy for me. Almost had that Tim Burton-esque look. But, Opie has done a good job with this film. Yes it does have its dark side to it, but isn't that what the grinch is all about? And then you have these... these... Whos, who look just as scary at first (think classic Twilight Zone with the lady who's face is wrapped up and you can't see the doctor or nurses' faces but when the bandages are taken off, she ends up being normal and its them with the pig faces) but have an endearing side to them. The innocence and overall nonchalant behavior shown by them is totally Seussian and Opie hits it on the nose.
Even the opening narration describes the world of Who-ville existing in a snowflake of the real world. Aaaahhh... touching.
Jim Carrey does his thing as the Grinch - a tuned down, but nastier, Mask rendition, but with the body hair of Sasquatch. Opie plays with the audience by not showing you a full-body frame of him in the beginning; he teases you for a little bit and then BAM!, kicks it up a notch with an in your face, full-bodied Grinch. Hmmm, that's funny. He does that in the preview too. We also get a little background about the Grinch that you don't get from the cartoon. Seems he had a crush on a certain Who in elementary school but because he didn't "look" like the other Whos, was pretty much made fun of which leads to his Mt. Crumpet living arrangements. And his dog Max is so much like the cartoon, they must have had a casting call for his part. A lot of the scenes were still unfinished with no background, but the ones that were done looked really good. One scene in particular, even though it still had some of the background missing, has the Grinch skiing behind the sled full of toys down Mt Crumpet. Jim adds a little bit of his humor in this and it had the theater laughing.
The town of Who-ville is a stunt man's paradise. Everything in their life is choreographed. The opening scene of the film has so many near collisions and pratfalls, you almost think you're watching a cartoon. The town itself is done very much like the book and cartoon - completely backwards. Small Whos carry bigger packages than themselves while regular Whos carry smaller packages, tiny Whos pop out of tubas playing their own horn - "chaos" is the town square. But the Whos thrive off of this and make up "stupid" laws just because they can (ie. the mayor announces that there will now be 25 hours in a day; everybody cheers). The whole movie builds up and then takes off at the part everybody is familiar with; the grinch stealing the Who's Christmas. This montage, with the narrator's Seussian play-by-play and the grinch-isms throughout, is done well and so by the book, it would make the good Dr. proud.
Little Cindy Lou-Who is probably the most cutest, and normal looking, Who in town. Her dad Lou is the postmaster (who looks much like Rick Moranis but its not) and Molly Shannon from SNL plays her mom, Betty Lou-Who. The story revolves around Little Cindy's fascination with the Grinch and why he is so "bad." Every time she mentions the name "Grinch," the Whos react in a way as if the five-year-old said, "fuck." All Whos hate the Grinch, but there really is no reason for this except that he look and acts differently from them. And because of this, the Grinch gets a kick by messing with their lives and then the ultimate, stealing "Christmas" from them. But the moral of the story is... well, we all know what the moral is.
I came away from this movie with a rekindled appreciation of Dr. Seuss. The two-dimensional cartoon will always be a classic to me, but this showed me what may have been in Dr. Seuss' actual mind when creating it. Any thoughts on Horton Hears a Who?
Superspy Marlon Brando
