THE GRINCH

Cert Running time

U Benedict Cumberbatch goes green in this colourfully animated family adventure from the makers of the Despicable Me franchise. It’s based on the 1957 children’s book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! by genius author Dr Seuss, and the Sherlock star voices the Grinch, a mountain-dwelling creature who lives all alone except for his faithful pooch, Max.

Due to having a heart two sizes too small, the Grinch hates Christmas and plans to ruin it for the happy singing townsfolk of Whoville, a village which looks like an electric rainbow of Swiss chalets. Meanwhile, a pigtailed poppet called Cindy Lou lives with her hardworking single mum and twin baby brothers, and she intends to trap Santa Claus so she can ask him for a very personal Christmas wish. Giving the Grinch a hard-luck backstory helps the scriptwriters flesh out the slim source material to a full 90 minutes, and encourages us to sympathise with him. Mind you, it’s more than possible not to have been raised in an orphanage and hate Christmas songs playing on the radio with the same passion as the Grinch does. The animators and designers capture Seuss’s unique illustrative style while souping it up with stateof-the-art techniques, but there’s too little of his wonderful whimsical charm or the childish delights of his verse.

Equally under-served is the velvet- voiced Cumberbatch who, struggling with a strangulated US accent while striving manfully with some of the weakest material of his career, is often reduced to just uttering yips, yowls and yelps.

However, there’s plenty of slapstick and sentiment among the cute animals and crazy contraptions, plus all the fur and clothes look reassuringly warm and cosy in the frozen wintery landscape.

More appealing than Jim Carrey’s laboured live-action adaption which appeared 18 years ago, little kids will enjoy this version for its zippy pace, bold colours and daft humour.