Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas arrived in theaters on November 17, 2000, carrying a $123 million budget and the full weight of a beloved 1957 children’s book. Ron Howard directed. Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman wrote the screenplay. Jim Carrey wore the green fur. The result grossed $351 million worldwide, won the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and remains, by any honest measure, a mess.
It is a fascinating mess. But a mess.
Trailer, via YouTube Movies.
Jim Carrey and the Weight of Green Fur
Carrey took the role after hearing a children’s choir tape of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.” That origin story tells you what the film thinks it is: a performance built around a song, a bit, a mood. What it actually delivers is Carrey at his most unleashed, buried under prosthetics that took the Academy’s makeup branch seriously enough to hand over an Oscar.
The Grinch here is not the silent, scheming creature of the 1966 animated TV special. This Grinch is a talker. He is a ranter. He is a misanthrope with a backstory, and that backstory is where the film loses its footing. The 2000 film is the second adaptation of the book, following that 1966 special.
The film spends its middle stretch explaining why the Grinch hates Christmas. He was raised by an elderly female Who couple. He had a crush on a classmate named Martha May Whovier. A bully named Augustus MayWho mocked his hairy face. The Grinch tried to shave, injured himself, and when the class laughed, he snapped and fled to Mount Crumpit.
That is a lot of psychology for a character whose original power was that he simply was what he was.
Whoville’s Mayor and the Razor That Ruins Everything
Jeffrey Tambor plays Mayor Augustus MayWho, the adult version of that childhood bully. The film is clear that he is the reason the Grinch hates Christmas. Christine Baranski plays Martha May Whovier, a wealthy socialite who secretly carries feelings for the Grinch and despises the mayor for his cruelty.
The film’s best sequence is the Holiday Cheermeister ceremony. Cindy Lou Who, played by Taylor Momsen, nominates the Grinch for the town honor. The townsfolk agree. MayWho and his aide Whobris, played by Clint Howard, object. Cindy travels to Mount Crumpit herself to invite him. He refuses, then changes his mind when he learns Martha will attend.
At the ceremony, the Grinch participates. He begins to enjoy himself. The Whos begin to warm to him.
Then MayWho hands him an electric razor as a gift, deliberately reopening the childhood wound. He proposes to Martha in front of the crowd, offering a car as an engagement gift. The Grinch scratches its door, accuses the Whos of valuing Christmas only for its materialism, and tears the ceremony apart.
You better watch out!
That tagline belongs to the marketing, not the movie, and it is more honest than the film deserves. This is a movie about a man being provoked, not a man being redeemed.
Cindy Lou Who and the Kindness Problem
Momsen’s Cindy Lou is the film’s conscience. She wonders whether Whoville has forgotten the true meaning of Christmas. In this version she is six years old. In the 1957 book and the 1966 TV special, she is “no more than two.” That change is not incidental. It is the whole architecture of the film.
A two-year-old can be a witness. A six-year-old can be a protagonist with a mission, a nomination, a journey up a mountain. The film needs Cindy to drive the plot, so it ages her, and in doing so it shifts the story from a fable about a community to a story about one child fixing an adult.
Bill Irwin plays Postmaster Lou Lou Who, Cindy’s father. Molly Shannon plays Betty Lou Who, her mother. They are warm, they are decent, and they are given almost nothing to do but stand behind their daughter’s project.
The supporting cast is deep and mostly wasted. Mindy Sterling appears as Clarnella. Bryce Dallas Howard appears as Surprised Who. Rachel Winfree appears as Rose. Lacey Kohl appears as Christina Whoterberry. These are names on a call sheet, not characters.
Anthony Hopkins Narrates, Max Steals the Show
Anthony Hopkins narrates the film. His voice is the closest thing here to the register of the original book, and it works. It also highlights how far the rest of the film has drifted from that register.
The real scene-stealer is Max, the Grinch’s mistreated dog and best friend. Six dogs played Max in total. The main one, Kelley, was rescued from a pound by Ron Howard himself. The others had their hair cut and dyed to match. Frank Welker provided the vocal effects, having done the same job on The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat.
That is a production detail worth more than most of the screenplay. A rescued dog, doubled five times over, doing the emotional labor the human cast cannot.
Josh Ryan Evans plays the 8-year-old Grinch. It was his final film role before his death in 2002. Ben Bookbinder plays the 8-year-old Augustus. Landry Allbright plays the 8-year-old Martha, the only classmate who did not laugh.
The 2000 Box Office and the Awards That Followed
How the Grinch Stole Christmas premiered in Los Angeles on November 8, 2000, and Universal Pictures released it in the United States on November 17. It grossed $351 million against a $123 million budget. It was the highest-grossing film of 2000 domestically and the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2000 worldwide.
It also landed as the fourth-highest-grossing holiday film of all time, behind Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
At the 73rd Academy Awards, it won Best Makeup and Hairstyling and earned nominations for Best Production Design and Best Costume Design. Carrey was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture.
Critics were mixed. Metacritic sits at 46 out of 100.
Here is the ranking that matters, in order of what actually holds up:
- The makeup and hairstyling, which earned its Oscar and then some.
- Anthony Hopkins’ narration, the one element that understands the source.
- Kelley the rescue dog as Max, the film’s most winning presence.
- The Holiday Cheermeister sequence, before the razor arrives.
- Everything else, which is noise.
What the Film Gets Wrong About the Grinch
The 1966 animated TV special and the 1957 book share a virtue: brevity. The Grinch is a force, not a case study. He steals Christmas because he cannot stand joy, and the story’s turn is that the Whos sing anyway. That is the whole point. The Grinch’s heart grows because their joy is not purchasable.
The 2000 film inverts this. It makes the Whos materialistic, which the Grinch correctly points out at the ceremony. It gives the Grinch a grievance instead of a nature. It turns a fable into a therapy session with a $123 million price tag.
Ron Howard is a capable director. The production design is genuinely impressive, which is why it earned its nomination. But the film’s central mistake is structural, not visual. By explaining the Grinch, it shrinks him. By aging Cindy Lou, it makes the story about a child’s intervention rather than a community’s resilience. By adding a mayor who is simply cruel, it gives the audience a villain to blame, which is the opposite of what Dr. Seuss wrote.
The film was the first of two Dr. Seuss books adapted into live-action features. That it was followed by another says more about the box office than about the art.
The Verdict on How the Grinch Stole Christmas
The film is a commercial machine that worked and an adaptation that did not. Carrey is committed, sometimes brilliantly, often exhausting. The makeup is extraordinary. Hopkins is perfect. The dog is the best actor on set.
Everything built around them — the backstory, the mayor, the razor, the engagement car, the aged-up Cindy — is scaffolding for a story that never needed scaffolding.
A $351 million gross and an Oscar do not make a good movie. They make a successful one. How the Grinch Stole Christmas is successful. It is not good.
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