Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas [2000] – Blu-ray Disc Review
October 15, 2009 – 10:44 AM - Posted by: Brendan SurplessTags: Anthony Hopkins, BD-Live, Brian Grazer, Christine Baranski, Clint Howard, Jeffrey Tambor, Jim Carrey, Molly Shannon, Ron Howard, Universal
has an average rating of 5.6 on IMDb
1080p in VC-1 on a 25gb disc
DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio
include ports, D-Box & a DVD
– 
– 2000
– 105 Minutes
– Universal
– 
This uses 19.3GB for the movie out of 22.3GB total.
Overall Verdict – Save Your Cash for the Holidays
Buy it for $17.99 @ Amazon.com
— Review written by: Brendan Surpless —
The Movie Itself was directed by Ron Howard (known for “A Beautiful Mind“). Director Ron Howard is quite the puzzling man. He surely knows how to direct a fine film like “A Beautiful Mind” or even “The Da Vinci Code“, but still knows how to give us that random piece of shit. When word came that Howard was going to adapt Dr. Seuss’ timeless classic “How The Grinch Stole Christmas“, I immediately questioned why? After all wasn’t the TNT special that airs oh 40-50 times a year good enough? I guess not for Hollywood as the 2000 remake made some serious bank with Jim Carrey portraying the lead character. The only unfortunate part here is that the film is absolutely horrendous.
Obviously being billed as a kid’s movie, this 2000 remake attempts (key word attempts) to reach the level that the TNT classic has by telling us the basic story. The first major problem is that the original 26-minute version that honestly everyone has probably seen is stretched out over the course of some 90 minutes. You must be asking yourself how did Howard and company manage to do this? Well first they decided to cast normal great actor Jim Carrey in the leading role. The Grinch is a boring, old, foogie who hates Christmas. We never learn why he hates Christmas (even though in the cartoon version we can assume it may be because of the togetherness of the season). In this version, Howard decided to just assume we could figure this one out. Even though the Grinch does hate Christmas, I must admit that Carrey does what he can with the material at hand. He’s able to make the film slightly (SLIGHTLY!) entertaining with his interesting humor and quirky smiles.
Also with the huge budget this film had you would think that the film would at least LOOK reasonable. Such isn’t the case here as everything from Carrey as the Grinch to the town of Whoville all looked way overdone never accomplishing the subtle charming qualities of the cartoon. I had hoped the dog Max, one of the best parts of the cartoon, would be faithfully created. Nope, Howard and company decided to have The Mayor kiss Max’s butt. Was this part in the newer version of the cartoon?
Overall, I can’t even believe that “Dr Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas” would be even remotely appealing to any parent or child. Personally if my parent bought this film and showed it to me, I would instantly develop a lack of respect for them. If you’re a fan of Carrey, don’t watch “The Grinch” unless you want an example of his worst film to date (solely due to the surroundings, not the acting). Everyone should just avoid this one.
Video Quality on this release is in full 1080p using the VC-1 codec on a BD-25 (25 gigabyte single layer Blu-ray Disc) in the 1:85:1 aspect ratio. Even though I mentioned above that the sets looked horrendous, I will admit that the film’s detail does look okay here. I had figured that many of the film’s super expensive sets, especially the snowy backgrounds, would look amazing. Instead we get scenes that tend to fluctuate in detail, ranging from somewhat good to downright poor. It’s almost like every scene had an extra coat of darkness added to it. Now this may have been due to the film’s color palette, which has a rather murky look to it. Color usage was a mixed bag with reds looking bright and colorful, but the amount of green on The Grinch made him look almost too green. And this was a big surprise as makeup guru Rick Baker (who has own numerous Academy Awards for his brilliant work) made The Grinch look too fake and almost too dark.
The only real negative here is that some of the sequences inside of The Grinch’s lair looked way too dark giving the transfer a very fuzzy look. This resulted in these sequences lacking the sharp detail some of the earlier exterior sequences had. Video noise is kept minimum. This was a big detail as video noise was a huge problem with the 2001 SD-DVD release. All in all, I expected a bit more out of this presentation as the film was a rather big success. This earns a decent “2.5 Star Rating“.
Audio Quality on this release is presented in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio. Dialogue was clean and clear throughout really giving us a sense of what a possible Whoville might be like around the holidays. Surround usage is decent with a few notices of liveliness (particularly the closing sequence with The Grinch delivering the presents to the town). Bass response was good enough with a sequence here and there (some of the banging and clanging of the various instruments) hitting the sub. One complaint I had was that there is so much literally going on during the film (in reference to all the different sounds) that I found myself actually having a headache at the end. Now that may be because the film was so horrible. All in all this earns a fairly good “3.5 Star Rating“.
Bonus Materials are presented in Standard Definition video quality with Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound.
- BD-Live is included on this release which requires the user to be on a “Profile 2.0” capable Blu-ray Disc Player to access online content from the studio, in this case Universal and share “My Scenes” (bookmarks) with friends online.
- A DVD of the film is included, making this a “combo” release. It comes in a paper sleeve and doesn’t included an actual place to store the disc aside from that, which tells me they chose to do this at the last minute or they were just trying to get rid of extra DVD’s or of leftover green Blu-ray cases — give or take one of the two, maybe even both actually.
- D-Box motion code is included for those with the proper equipment to decode this.
- Enhanced Feature Commentary with Director Ron Howard: I’ve heard various Howard commentaries before and I will say that the man has a nice tone to his voice that tends to usually keep the viewer interested in what he’s saying. Even though he gives the typical praise to his work and cast almost comparing it to the second coming, the commentary is still worth a listen for fans of the film.
- Whobilation 1000 Games: Give me a damn break here. No kid, no matter how dumb they are will enjoy this.
- Wholiday Recipes: Various recipes that I’m sure are super healthy for your kids.
- Special Announcement: A standard announcement fare from cute little Wendy.
Overall, call me whatever you deem correct, but I just couldn’t warm to Howard’s The Grinch. He has taken away anything remotely charming about the TNT classic and has, instead, delivered the perfect sleeping antidote. Even though the picture is fine, the audio good, the features decent, I can’t really imagine any self-respecting parent wanting to buy this for their child. Instead of this affair, give The Christmas Story a spin instead.
Blu-ray Disc packaging:
Screenshots:
NOTE: The full-sized 1920×1080 files are in a .PNG file format and uncompressed. Bare with the slow loading times, keep in mind these files are at least 1MB (1 megabyte) in size each.
