There’s this green guy, not what you’d call conventionally handsome and in possession of certain antisocial tendencies, sometimes downright foul-tempered, but kids love him anyway, maybe because they understand feelings of rejection or alienation from adults fixated on rules. Or maybe just because this green guy performs his foul temper with outsized, cartoony antics. I’m not, by the way, talking about Shrek. But the success of the animated feature bearing his name might have been more widely predicted if pundits back in 2001 had looked at the previous year’s biggest-grossing movie: Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, starring Jim Carrey and directed by Ron Howard.
The live-action Grinch, which turned 25 last month but has really kicked into anniversary overdrive with the Christmas season and an accompanying exhaustive and fascinating oral history of its production courtesy of Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri. Ebiri notes that the movie doesn’t have the most sterling critical reputation; unlike Shrek, a movie that has aged only slightly better than milk, its commercial success does not appear to have grandfathered How the Grinch Stole Christmas into a perpetual pass. Yet it’s a difficult movie to ignore for many reasons, some of them interestingly statistical.
For one, it was the last highest-grossing domestic release to take that spot with a gross of under $300 million in North America (at least until the heavily asterisked pandemic year of 2020). That might sound ignominious, but that also points to that its success was a combination of seasonal, conceptual, and movie-star-based. Obviously the Grinch was a well-known character from a book and animated TV perennial, but How the Grinch Stole Christmas is one of just three annual top-grossers of the 21st century that is not, and/or did not spawn, a sequel. (The other two? American Sniper and Barbie.) It also remains the biggest U.S. grosser in the careers of both Carrey and Howard, all the more impressive for withstanding a quarter-century’s worth of inflation.
Oh, and at 50% on the ol’ Tomatometer, that Grinch movie is also the worst-reviewed annual champion of this century. The other movies competitive in that category, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Spider-Man 3, have both seen some movie-nerd reclamation for the persistence of vision shown by respective directors Gore Verbinski and Sam Raimi. In other words, How the Grinch Stole Christmas is an outlier.
On the other hand, Christmas movies don’t really need critical or even fandom reclamations. Christmas movies are for the people, and the people have continued to watch this version of the Grinch on TV, DVD, and streaming, and will likely continue to do so on whatever eyeball-injection platform eventually replaces streaming. Most people who watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas probably do so without the merest inkling of its statistical weirdnesses or the repulsed critical reaction. At this point, a whole lot of people have grown up with this movie, and between this movie and the more recent Sonic series, Jim Carrey’s place as a multigenerational child icon is assured.
And it’s Carrey’s performance, truly, that makes How the Grinch Stole Christmas a movie that’s weirdly compelling even if you sensibly regard it as a garish, overworked, cacophonous nightmare-hallucination expanding on a near-perfect 24 minutes of animation. Carrey, as he usually does, absolutely threw himself into this bizarre assignment. That’s what the interviewees in Ebiri’s behind-the-scenes piece keep hammering home, describing a physical transformation for Carrey that sounds at least as punishing as anything Leonardo DiCaprio endured for The Revenant. Covered in itchy dyed-green fur and bulbus prosthetics, outfitted with colored contact lenses and elaborate false teeth, Carrey was in Rick Baker hell throughout the shoot, and to his credit, he betrays no greater misery than the Grinch’s personal vendettas and pet peeves (though maybe it was easy to keep those closer to the surface with the constant physical agony and all).
Carrey also spends a lot of time performing an extended nutbar solo; he barely interacts with any fellow performers for the first half-hour of the movie. Left to his devices in the Grinch’s mountain-cave lair, he minces, he prances, he screams into the void, he growls and eats glass. When he does have a more extended scene with young Cindy Lou Who (Taylor Momsen), he throws himself into a teeth-gnashing, fearmongering, limb-thrashing frenzy.
The performance taps more directly into the comic aggression that’s always been a part of Carrey’s persona, and makes it a more integral part of his story arc than, say, Ace Ventura, who is an amusing force of nature but never really stops acting like a version of the Grinch who genuinely loves himself (and, secondarily, animals) more than he loathes anyone else. In that sense, Carrey’s Grinch is a more traditional manifestation of the stereotypical comedian mix of hostility, antic desire to perform, secret emotional neediness, and self-loathing. (In this telling, he even shows up in Whoville to accept an award, legible as a light parody of actorly Oscar hunger.) Despite Carrey’s next-biggest hit, Bruce Almighty, being a less explicitly kid-targeted affair, it nonetheless sands off a lot of these edges. Carrey would give other bravura comic performances in the years following his Grinchy turn (and some career-best work in less broad comedies, too), but I’m not sure if he ever again felt quite so unhinged in such a mainstream picture.
The movie itself is frequently too garish, frantic, and overcomplicated to show off its insanely elaborate practical sets, makeup, and elastic camerawork. The idea that the story hinges on the lost love of the Grinch’s life, or even the weird notion that there’s some version of moral righteousness behind his hatred of the Whos, which stands in direct opposition to the original Dr. Seuss book, is pure screenwriter vamping. (The flashback Baby Grinch puppet is grotesquely adorable, though.) It is, in many ways, a theme-park version of a charming children’s book. That’s not really what people see when they look at How the Grinch Stole Christmas, though. Carrey, who has been repeatedly described as preternaturally skilled at knowing where to position himself maximally for the camera’s “eye,” draws too much attention. As much as the movie is a lavishly budgeted old-fashioned Hollywood megaproduction, it still feels like Carrey single-handedly turns it into the best approximation of a holiday classic.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! (At least, that’s what Andy Williams promised.) The holidays are a time to celebrate with family, friends, food, and, let’s not forget, fun things to watch. Whether you’re huddled up with the whole family in your living room or cozying up under the covers with your tablet, let Decider be your guide to all things festive this holiday season.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.