The Whos that live in a snowflake are horrible people (well, they’re horrible Whos, but let’s refer to them as people, because otherwise it gets too confusing). This is essentially a film that on the surface is about a group of people learning the real meaning of Christmas, but it’s actually a film about a group of people who abused someone (the green Grinch) who looked different to them, to the point where they felt it was okay let him to go and live at the top of a mountain by himself even though he wass only a child. Talk about childhood abuse!
They then continue to hate him when he grows up, simply because he understandably doesn’t like them (at the beginning of the movie no one’s seen him for decades, but the Whos’ loathing knows no ends).
However it’s not just The Grinch himself that shows what awful people these are, as the main plot of the film is about pre-pubescent Cindy Lou-Who, who is suffering from some sort of low-grade depression, probably brought about and exacerbated by the fact that her parents barely notice her and she lives in a town where the mayor is prepared to publicly berate him in front of the whole populace. Despite their love of Christmas, the Whos really are quite horrible.
Luckily though, despite her depression, Cindy is quite nice and attempts to find the goodness in The Grinch. While he hates Christmas and eventually decides to ‘steal’ the festive season from the Whos he hates, Cindy believes there’s a good person inside and will stop at nothing to bring it out of him. It’s an odd but entertaining movie, with Jim Carrey giving a great performance under tonnes of make-up in the title role.
This new edition brings the film to Blu-ray for the first time, in a package that includes The Grinch in both its new HD form and also on a separate standard-definition DVD, so that the kids can watch it in rooms where you don’t have a BD player. As with many films from a few years ago, the movie looks good in HD, but not as bright and sharp as the latest movies do on Blu-ray.
It’s certainly not a bad picture and better than the DVD, but for such a visual film, it doesn’t ‘pop’ quite as much as you’d hope. During brightly lit scenes it looks very good and sharp, showing off the extensive use of CG scenery and the wonderful production design, but it doesn’t handle darkness particularly well, with things tending to merge into an amorphous blob, rather than the nicely delineated gradations between blacks you get on the best HD discs. There are also occasional problems with grain, although nothing too bad. Overall it’s a picture you’ll probably be happy with, even if you’re unlikely to be blown away.
The sound however is excellent, with crystal clear audio and excellent use of your surrounf sound set-up.
The Blu-ray of The Grinch also comes with plenty of special features, all of which are ported over from the collector’s edition DVD release. There are several good featurettes, an audio commentary, music video, deleted scenes and outtakes, most of which are worth a look, especially as purely from a technical point of view, the film is an impressive achievement. The Blu-ray may not show off the beautiful visual design of The Grinch quite as perfectly as you might hope, but it still looks far better than any previous release of the film.
Overall Verdict: A good but not perfect HD upgrade for a beautiful looking but slightly odd tale of childhood abuse and depression.
Special Features:
Grinch DVD
Audio Commentary With Director Ron Howard
‘Spotlight On Location’ Featurette
‘Who School’ Featurette
‘Makeup Application And Design’ Featurette
‘Suessian Set Design’ Featurette
‘Visual Effects’ Featurette
Deleted Scenes
Outtakes
‘Where Are You Christmas’ Faith Hill Music Video
Reviewer: Tim Isaac
