Death by Adaptation: How the Grinch Stole Christmas
CBSOf all the Christmas classics to be released in the 20th century, none has had a bigger cultural impact than Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Published in 1957, this black, white, and red children’s book became a massive sensation all over the world. Dr. Seuss (real name Theodor Seuss Geisel) managed to create a story that is simple enough to connect with the young and the old, painting a picture-perfect portrait of the most famous holiday without attaching any religious symbolism to it.
The Grinch is one of the meanest characters to ever be featured in a book of any kind. With his mischievous smile, furry texture, and elongated figure, just one look at him tells the reader that he is up to no good. Living in a cave on Mount Crumpit, he spends his days loathing the Whos, the people of Whoville. They are a joyful bunch, celebrating the end of December with feasts and gifts and music and cheer, which rile up the Grinch to an insane degree.
Rather than joining their festivities or letting them be, the Grinch concocts a plan where, with the forced help of his small dog Max, he will steal all the Whos’ toys and food to ruin their Christmas. However, even with all his efforts, the Whos still end up celebrating in the square, singing all together hand in hand, for the real meaning of Christmas is not tied to material values, but rather in the goodness of the heart. So, the Grinch rides back to town, giving back everything he stole, and spends the day eating and singing with the Whos.
At barely 70 pages, the illustrated book of How the Grinch Stole Christmas has stood the test of time because of its anti-consumerism approach to the most lucrative period of the year, as well as having delightful rhymes from beginning to end (a trademark of Dr. Seuss). It was only a matter of time before the story got adapted into a film, and in 1966 audiences got just that.
In the same vein as 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas was a half-hour holiday special broadcast on CBS. Directed by none other than Chuck Jones and Ben Washam of Looney Tunes fame, and starring Boris Karloff as both the voice of the Grinch and the narrator, the short takes every element of the book and stretches it just enough to make this a worthwhile and memorable watch.
It is thanks to this film that the Grinch became associated with the colour red, since the television network pushed the filmmakers to have this be entirely in colour. Dr. Seuss helped heavily with bringing this colourful world to life, and he also helped in writing the lyrics to three original songs. The music creates a lovely atmosphere, and the drawings are lovingly crafted and animated.
The Grinch himself is unforgettable: his literal ear-to-ear grin or slithering on the floor of the houses are creepy visuals that solidified the character as a true villain, haunting children for generations to come. Karloff did a tremendous job with his vocal performance, and his British accent manages to elevate the writing to bigger heights.
Some of the standout moments of the cartoon of How the Grinch Stole Christmas are the iconic use of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”, as the devilish protagonist dresses himself up as Santa and his dog as a reindeer; the hilarious trip to get to Whoville; and the ending, where the Grinch’s heart literally grows three times in size, giving him the strength needed to keep the Whos’ gifts from falling down a cliff. There are no changes here that modify or corrupt the author’s original intent. If anything, what Jones, Washam and their team created was an affectionate tribute to the book and to Christmas as a whole, and it has rightfully become a holiday classic for countless households.
However, this is not the only time that the book has been adapted in the cinematic form. Hollywood’s favourite journey director, Ron Howard, turned it into a Jim Carrey vehicle in 2000. One of only two live-action renditions of Seuss’ work, this How the Grinch Stole Christmas has nightmarish imagery that would rival Tim Burton’s most disturbing work: the Whos are creepy with their exaggerated facial features, and the Grinch’s makeup – while impressive on a technical level – is completely off-putting and hard to look at. The whole film is just plain ugly, failing to capture a festive mood despite its best efforts to replicate some scenes from the original cartoon. This and 2003’s The Cat in the Hat perfectly showcase why Dr. Seuss works better in a more stylised format than real life.
Sadly, Illumination Entertainment secured the rights to many of the books of the American author, and in 2018 they released the simply-titled The Grinch. Using 3D animation instead than the original’s hand-drawn; the film could be renamed Despicable Me: Christmas Edition and no one would notice the difference. Benedict Cumberbatch voices the protagonist, but rather than being a mean heel, he is just annoyed at the excessively cheery Whos.
Too much time is spent on trying to delve into the past of the green creature, which brings more questions than answers: if he was in an orphanage as a kid, why is there literally no one there to celebrate Christmas with him? This was a wasted opportunity to show a harsh childhood, where maybe the orphanage was either too poor to afford gifts for the children, or there was a mean director who hated everything about the holiday. By showing a cute baby Grinch inside a seemingly abandoned orphanage, it shows how riskless Illumination is as a studio, where everything has to be neutered down for children as to avoid any sort of real conflict in their narratives.
The Grinch plods along with very few exciting or fun sequences, and there is even more wasted potential with the character of Cindy-Lou Who, used only to lengthen the runtime and likely sell even more toys. The only character who comes out unscathed is the dog Max, a constant presence in every version, who stole the 1966 version and is the only source of real entertainment in the 2018 one. Cumberbatch’s Grinch, on the other hand, is utterly forgettable, and his decision to ditch his British accent – which would have been a welcome tip of the hat to Karloff and fitting in showing how different he is from the American cast of Whos – is baffling to say the least.
Thankfully, Illumination seems to be done with transposing the short stories of Dr. Seuss to the big screen. It is a shame that a story as simple and pure as How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which is all about reminding children and adults alike that true joy comes from the heart and not from gifts, ended up being a multi-million-dollar property with countless toys and merchandising being sold annually. Still, despite having its original message lost in more recent versions, the 1966 cartoon of How the Grinch Stole Christmas stays true to its source material and will continue to delight viewers for many decades to come.