Main cast: Jim Carrey (The Grinch), Taylor Momsen (Cindy Lou Who), Jeffrey Tambor (May Who), Christine Baranski (Martha May Whovier), Bill Irwin (Lou Lou Who), and Molly Shannon (Betty Lou Who)
Director: Ron Howard

It’s all you folks who didn’t make Man on the Moon a box office hit that are to blame. When Jim Carrey realizes that no one buys his serious acting, now he’s back to his plastic tomfoolery and there’s no hope for us all. We are doomed.

Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a garish, lurid overdressed movie that would have made Batman and Robin look like a Picasso. The characters are so butt ugly and unlikable that the movie ends up a far cry from its original idea of a boy who takes revenge on his bullied-to-death childhood by ruining Christmas. In the book, I cheer the Grinch on. In this movie, I want the Grinch dead and beheaded, that irritating pipsqueak.

The Grinch is born with green fur all over his body and is tormented and jeered at left and right for that. So now, years later, he plans to dress up as Santa and steal as many Christmas pressies he could find. Of course, everyone hugs each other in the end, but before that, I am subjected to Grinchy yelling and screaming and generally being an ugly pest on the screen.

Thing is, the movie gives Mr Carrey far too much freedom to camp it up and make the Grinch so excruciatingly overacted and over-screamy that I am hard-pressed to even muster any sympathy for him.

Put in the usual sentimental schmaltz like sympathetic waifish little girls befriending Grinchy and Christmas ornaments floating around in glowing halo (or something), and all I get is a garish, loud, annoying mess of a movie.