I have a long and fond history with the original animated adaptation of ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’, cozy winter evenings watching a beat up VHS copy of the special taped from live TV, and once Satallite TV became a thing, Cartoon Network would often show it AT LEAST 2-3 times a week in syndication, and if I saw it in the listings, i’d usually take the 25-30 minutes needed to reacquaint myself with it, in the last few years i’ve unfortunately not been able to catch this one. But tonight; I pulled out the HD ‘Ultimate Edition’ and decided to revisit this one, and I really wasnt dissapointed.

What we have here is, in my opinion the best adaptation of the short story to date. and the big key to this one is simply that its short. I’ve found the longer Grinch adaptations stretch the plot of the story WELL beyond its natural running length and bog the story down with character origin stories or unecissary sideplots that dont really add much to the tone or vibe of proceedings.

This special takes the core elements of the story and animates them beautifully via the mind of Chuck Jones and animation talent including Phil Roman. its a creative labour of love that builds on the illustrations from the book, bringing a vibrant and unique spin to proceedings. with the pacing running just right and the messaging landing with the kind of heartwarming sweetness that could melt even the coldest of fogies.

The animation style is perfectly suited for this kind of story and the remastering carried out on the latest release scrapes years of discolouration and ‘fuzziness’ away from those old TV broadcasts, revitalising the short in a way that positively blew the cobwebs off.

As important and relevant today as it was almost 60 years ago. This version is certain to captivate young children and the parents and grandparents who saw this when they too were kids. I love this film quite dearly and while im sure every man and his dog has seen this one before, if it’s been a while, or you legitimately HAVENT seen this one. Its definitely time to fix that.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/how-the-grinch-stole-christmas/