Christmas, what a busy time of year. So full of happiness and cheer. But not everyone feels jolly, some even wish to burn all the holly. Some are recovering from the November stress, only to be met with a December mess. One only needs to look at this site. No, I haven’t taken a hike. Work has been filled with chaos and fighting, I simply haven’t had time to do any writing. So what do you do when you need a review in a pinch? Why, you tackle the classic holiday special, the Grinch.
Okay, rhyming is way too hard, so that’s over now. Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas is one of my favorite Christmas specials. It never feels like Christmas until I’ve seen this special. Even though it’s only half an hour long, it always leaves a big impact. And it has to be this version. There is no live action version starring an actor I can barely stand. That is merely a figment of your imagination.
It starts out on the top of Mt. Crumpit, where the Grinch lives with his dog, Max. He’s fed up with all the noise the Whos make down in Whoville every single Christmas. He resolves to stop Christmas from coming by dressing up as Santa Claus and stealing all the Whos’ decorations. He dresses Max up as a reindeer, and the two sneak into town Christmas Eve. He steals the toys, the decorations, the food, everything. Cindy Lou Who catches him though, but he lies to her and says that a bulb on the tree is broken and he’s going to fix it. She fails to notice that everything else in the room is missing, believes “Santa Claus,” and goes back to bed. The Grinch spends the rest of the night clearing out every single house in Whoville.
Just before sunrise, Grinch and Max sneak out of town and heads back up Mt. Crumpit. At the top, the Grinch gets out of his sled to listen to all the Whos crying as they realize that Christmas isn’t coming this year. However, the Whos gather in the center of town and start to sing, welcoming Christmas. As the Grinch ponders this, he has a change of heart and decides to return all of the stuff he stole. The Whos welcome him to town and let him join in the festivities. They even allow him to carve the roast beast. The Grinch decides that Christmas doesn’t come from a store, but that it perhaps means a little bit more.
The Grinch, voiced by Boris Karloff, is a green hermit who lives in the mountains surrounding Whoville. He is at least fifty-three years old, since that’s how long he says he’s been putting up with the Whos. No one really knows the reason he hates Christmas so much, but the most likely explanation is his heart. It is two sizes too small at the beginning of the movie, but at the end, it grows three sizes and gives him the strength of twelve Grinches. Though there are those out there who suggest that the Grinch had a heart attack, and that’s why his heart grew three sizes. I often tell people that the Grinch is my spirit animal, because I relate so much to him. I get that toys are loud and obnoxious and all the batteries need to be taken away from children. I get that nonstop Christmas music before it’s even December is annoying. Heck, nonstop Christmas music in December is annoying, especially when it’s the same ten songs over and over again. (And who had the bright idea to take the “rum pum pum pum”s out of “Little Drummer Boy”? That has got to be the WORST version of that song ever! STOP PLAYING THIS VERSION!) Anyway, the further away we are from Christmas, the less Christmas stuff I want to be exposed to. December 20 is a good day to break out the music. My point is, the Grinch is right to an extent. Boris Karloff also does the narration.
Cindy Lou Who, voiced by June Foray in an uncredited role, is a two-year-old Who. She sort of has a friendship with the Grinch. It’s not developed much, outside of her getting tricked into thinking the Grinch was Santa Claus. Though she does sit next to him at the feast at the end of the movie. She has exactly one line and is the only named Who in town. There’s really not much else since I refuse to acknowledge a certain version of this tale, and I haven’t seen the newest version.
Max is the Grinch’s dog. He has a couple of yips, which IMDB says were done by an uncredited Dal McKennon. Growing up, I always thought that Boris Karloff did Max’s vocals. Apparently, I was wrong. Max helps the Grinch steal Christmas, even though it seems like he’s not fully supportive of the idea. Max’s biggest role is acting as the Grinch’s reindeer and pulling the sled down Mt. Crumpit. I’m sure PETA workers have heart attacks every time they watch this movie. The Grinch totally takes Max for granted and abuses him. He must care for Max on some level, since he keeps the dog around.
This special did a very good job at taking a children’s book that’s not even a centimeter thick and turning it into something for television. The story, in my opinion, does not work as a feature-length film. If you’ve seen the unmentionable 2000 version of this story, then you probably agree with me. Of course, this version had Chuck Jones and Dr. Seuss himself behind the helm. I have not seen the new movie that just came out yet, and I probably will not see it in theaters. I don’t know if I will ever see it, since I just don’t see how they can take a story that’s really not that long and expand it into a feature-length movie and have it be good. This version was already expanded into thirty minutes, because they added in three songs.
Speaking of songs, the songs in this special are extremely memorable. There’s “Welcome Christmas,” which we’ve all tried to learn the Whovian words to. There’s also “Trim Up The Tree,” which many of you probably didn’t realize was an entirely different song, since they’re played back to back in the special, and sung by the same choir. It’s interesting that these two songs were played back to back in the beginning, since their messages are polar opposites. “Welcome Christmas” is used again at the end of the special to reinforce the idea that Christmas is more than just the material things, yet “Trim Up The Tree” is all about decorating for Christmas and that material things are important and a huge chunk of what makes Christmas so great. The last song is “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” performed by Thurl Ravenscroft. Arguably the most popular song of the three, this is what most people think of when they think of the Grinch songs.
The animation is very simple. But there is a beauty in its simplicity. This special first aired in 1966, so they didn’t have all the fancy tools available to animators now. They had to make do with what they had. And they did a good job at bringing a classic Dr. Seuss character to life. It’s simple, but imaginatively simple. It captures the spirit of Seuss’ stories. Though since Seuss wrote the screenplay and helped produce it, that makes sense. Is it perfect, no. Far from it. But it looks like a Seuss story. Like I mentioned earlier, Chuck Jones worked on this project, and he was one of the big names in animation at the times. He’s still one of the big names in animation, and he died in 2002. Together, the two told a simple story with a simple moral in a relatively simple way. Sometimes that’s all you need. The Grinch is a famous character, and people keep trying to give him full length movies. But his message doesn’t really work in a full length film because it’s not meant to. The more you expand, the more you add in backstory, the more you take away from the heart of what Dr. Seuss was trying to tell.
I’m SJ, and these are my real thoughts on Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
P.S. I apologize for not posting anything in over a month. Work has been hectic with the holidays, but I also participated in National Novel Writing Month this past November, and I focused my attention on that instead. Now that that’s over, you can expect a semi-regular posting schedule again.
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