Christmas is near and the citizens of Whoville are in the merriest of moods, eagerly awaiting the much-loved holiday. However, this plenteous cheer pierces not but a single solitary soul residing in a cave, and that is the Grinch.
For 53 years the Grinch has put up with the nauseatingly optimistic holiday spirit of the people nearby, but this time he deems they have gone too far. The Mayor of Whoville has decided that the holiday shall be three times bigger this year, but the Grinch will not have it. And so he schemes to steal their Christmas and with it their spirit once and for all.
The movie takes us through snow-clad hills in a vibrant azure tint before the establishing shot reveals both Mount Crumpit, on which the Grinch’s cave is located, and Whoville. Here we’re introduced to the Whos, a gladsome bunch and the Grinch, a grumpy old recluse who wants no part in the ongoing festivities. The transition from Whoville to Mt. Crumpit at the beginning of the movie highlights this in a humorous manner; we see the Grinch lash his alarm clock repeatedly with various objects when it starts playing holiday tunes.
The film then introduces a hip-hop version of the classic song You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch as it reveals the character’s amusing morning routine. Here the Grinch’s pet dog, Max, plays the role of an assistant; from preparing his coffee to helping him get his frown on, to choosing his ‘mood’ clothes ranging from ‘Unhappy’ to ‘Wretched’ to ‘Miserable’, and even ‘Very Miserable’. The movie also has a moment of witty wordplay when it shows a medium close-up shot of the Grinch’s body spray which reads ‘Mold Spice’, a nod to the line ‘Your heart’s a dead tomato splotched with mouldy purple spots, Mr. Grinch’.
The roots of the Grinch’s disrelish for Christmas is gradually revealed from how he has run out of food due to emotional eating to running away in fear from carolers who approach him. The narrator (Pharrell Williams) initially suggests that perhaps the Grinch’s heart is two sizes too small, but we see later that his reasons are far more personal and linked to disappointments he had faced during his childhood.
It would be a stretch to say the film highlights the effects of trauma, but it does, in a way, symbolise how such events may affect a child’s viewpoint on certain things, and how such a child would adapt unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with them as he or she grows up. The Grinch is shown to be extremely introverted and misanthropic to a certain degree, but his reasons begin to seep out when he meets Cindy-Lou, an energetic and smart little girl who desperately wants to mail a letter to Santa Claus. The Grinch says that the Who children are selfish because Cindy-Lou is too concerned about her letter to ask how he is after she crashes into him while taking a detour to meet the mailman.
Throughout the first few sequences of the movie, the Grinch is merely a passive villain obstructing the Whos’ activities—or at least attempting to and failing miserably—or rather ‘very miserably’; but when he comes face to face with the one thing he detests the most on a scale which he had never experienced before, the Grinch decides to play the role of an active villain this time. It is noteworthy to mention that the particular scene that sets him off could be viewed as a representation of the sensory overload associated with anxiety, aside from showcasing flashbacks linked to traumatic events of the past.
Benedict Cumberbatch is excellent at grasping all the grumpy attitudes of the Grinch. From the grumbling to the gasping, from the sneering to the squawking, he meets all these aspects to a tee. One such memorable scene is when the Grinch gets a ‘wonderful terrible idea’ to rid Whoville of Christmas; the changes in the timbre of his voice during that moment whilst it grows higher in pitch (sounding quite similar to Peter Pettigrew from ‘Harry Potter’) to the rather raspy, deeper voice that follows when he declares that he will steal their Christmas are performed perfectly. Furthermore, the animations brilliantly capture the Grinch’s facial expressions, especially in the above scene, where the Grinch’s evil smile is near to that of Gollum from ‘The Lord of the Rings’.
Cameron Seeley delivers an excellent performance as the young Cindy-Lou who wants to meet Santa so she could ask him to help her overworked single mother, Donna (Rashida Jones) to be happy. Pharrell Williams does a fantastic job in meeting the changes of tone and emotions associated with the story. Though certain lines in the narration do stand out as bland, the overall effect on the story is not hindered. The scores also play well in setting the atmosphere for many varying sequences, be it comedic, lighthearted, or dramatic.
There are, however, certain animation scenes related to physics that seemed odd or flawed towards the end of the movie when the Grinch puts his master plan into action. Though he takes on the persona of an anti-Clause/Ethan Hunt (Mission: Impossible) amalgamation while inventing numerous ingenious gadgets, the capabilities of those weapons and the methodology in which he uses them are somewhat unrealistic.
The dialogues are compelling in helping us understand the Grinch’s motives and backstory. Further, the film does not reveal too much too fast and keeps a steady flow most of the time. There are a couple of sequences where its flow changes rather abruptly not due to flawed editing, but due to certain plot twists that are either rushed and underwhelming, or just too convenient. One such scene was related to the Grinch’s new partner, Fred the reindeer; while the other is towards the climax of the movie where although how the Grinch realises what he really despised was not Christmas but solitude, his change of heart occurs in an anticlimactic manner.
The film does have certain moments of symbolism; one such sight is when Whoville’s Christmas lights are aglow whilst the Grinch stands on a ledge in the snow. This draws a contrast between the warmth and optimism of the town and the bitter cold that consumes the Grinch. And perhaps the one message ‘The Grinch’ tells us, be it quite a cliche, is that kindness and love are what we all need most.
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