Misty Krueger

This is the Grinch I grew up with:

I watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas! every year on TV! You know the Grinch is from the 1957 story, but my Grinch was Boris Karloff. I loved his voice. I loved his evil grin. I loved the song by Thurl Ravenscroft: those lyrics, y’all. Poetry.

I wasn’t on board with the 2000 Jim Carrey adaptation of the TV film. A live-action Grinch movie was weird, and Jim Carrey was a bit much. I commend him, and all the actors involved, for wearing so much makeup and prosthetics to pull off the Who looks.

Then in 2018 the universe gave us a new Grinch movie with Benedict Cumberbatch. This time the adaptors went back to the cartoon inspiration from the 60s and gave us something much closer to the “original” adaptation than the Carrey Grinch. I liked that much more.

I was super excited in 2018 when the movie came out, and I even went to see it in the theater, but I slept through the film. I had received a chemo treatment on the day I went to the movies, and once the movie started and I kicked back in my movie theater recliner, it was lights out!

It’s funny that I wanted to see the movie but slept through it, but it was a good nap, so when you’re sick you take them where you can get them.

Fast forward to 2020! I was browsing Netflix, and I saw the movie was available, so on December 4 I thought I’d watch it.

I put on the movie, watched about 10 minutes, and then decided to multitask: I graded proposals while watching. I found myself totally uninterested in the film. Benedict Cumberbatch does a fine job of portraying the Grinch. I found the other characters uninteresting.

I’d say I watched about as much of the film this year as I did in 2018. I kept it on in the background, and even made it through the credits, but I can’t tell you much about this film except the mom is like all moms in Xmas movies and is too busy for her kids; also, Cindy Lu knows how to snowboard. Other than that, dunno what new stuff was added; don’t really care, I guess.

The movie got good reviews, so I think I must have missed something. Maybe I should watch it again. Tell me what you think about the 2018 film. Does it deserve a third viewing? 😀

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Edit: Thanks to Samantha Murphy for alerting me to the fact that NBC is going to be airing a Grinch musical on December 9. Will I watch it? Maybe. Will I like it? Probably not. I’m too wedded to the 1966 Grinch.