The Grinch doesn’t understand
Illumination is just, not a good animation studio, mildly overhated but still a really bad studio. Most of there films just feel so uninspired, there animation style is basic, there writing is so by the numbers and they’re not really funny. Sucks since I know they’re apparently really nice to work with, but the films just never feel like anything. I do have some I enjoy like the first two despicable me films, The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Migration but even so none of the films I just named are really incredible just enjoyable at most. Unfortunately the Grinch is another example of them just kinda playing it safe but what sucks about this one is that it could’ve been way more. The original grinch story is probably my favorite Seuss book so it sucks ti see how much they get wrong here. Let me explain.
The Grinch immediately shows its problems as soon as it starts with narration from Pharrell Williams. He doesn’t do good as the narrator and that could be said about the rest of the cast too. Benedict Cumberbatch Is doing like 3 different voices for the grinch and none of them work. Sometimes he’s trying to sound like Jim Carrey’s grinch, other times he’s just doing an accent and sometimes he’s just using his own voice, it’s never consistent you’re always aware it’s a performance. That goes for the rest of the cast, like Kenan Thompson. The voice acting was really bad.
The animation is admittedly the best thing about this film, it looks pretty enough. The backgrounds especially at night look really good but, not a fan of the character designs. They don’t look like Dr Seuss, they feel so basic, I don’t think that film is good but The Lorax captures the look way better than this. They all still have the typical illumination designs that only really worked for despicable me because that’s, that franchise style. But yeah it does look overall nice but still could look better.
As for the characters they mess that up too, for one there shouldn’t be more than 3 characters in the grinch. Why are there so many here. Cindy Lou Who gets her own subplot, shocker, it’s not that interesting. The Grinch isn’t the grinch, he’s Squidward a grumpy neighbor who’s annoyed with his town. Only difference is Squidward is funny. The Grinch doesn’t even like really start to hate Christmas until the middle which is weird. They give him this backstory which is just Carreys back story form his film but makes even less sense. Like I don’t know I get it some what but this doesn’t really seem like something he’d hate Christmas over. It’s even shown throughout the film that he secretly likes Christmas. I don’t get it, if he wanted to celebrate with someone in this case it feels like he can just celebrate with max or his neighbor I don’t know, this just feels so forced. There’s a whole other cast of characters in this that really aren’t worth mentioning, Cindy Lou’s Mom, a Reindeer, Cindy’s Friend’s, The Grinch’s neighbor, all to just pad out the cast.
Speaking of Padding that’s what the story does, the Grinch doesn’t actually steal Christmas until the last 25 minutes. A lot of it is just planning for it, which would maybe be fine but theirs so much filler. Again just feels like it’s here to pad out the run time. Cindy Lou wants to make her mom happy and I just don’t see why I should care. We don’t get to know her mom, we don’t even know much about Cindy other than the fact that she loves her mom. Cool but, why should I care about this plot? I don’t. I don’t even care about about the grinch plot either again I don’t believe in his motivation I don’t feel his hate for Christmas. Jim’s version reason for hating Christmas, and the original was just an asshole both work on there own, but this film wants to pick both. It doesn’t work I never believe in these motivations and if I never feel the motivations, why am I watching?
If I haven’t made it clear, this is a bad movie. Not the worst but it’s a boring film that somehow misunderstood the message of a picture book. Boring designs, bad characters and just a nothing story, it’s a boring illumination movie to throw with the other boring illumination films nothing worse than that but nothing better.