How the Grinch Stole Christmas (A Little Less to "Carrey" Edition)

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How the Grinch Stole Christmas (A Little Less to "Carrey" Edition)
Faneditor Name:
Original Movie Title:
Fanedit Type:
Original Release Date:
2000
Original Running Time:
104
Fanedit Release Date:
Fanedit Running Time:
89
Time Cut:
15
Available in HD?
Brief Synopsis:
I appreciate what Jim Carrey and Ron Howard did for the movie, but the problem with Carrey's humor is that it was great in the 90's, but now it just feels a bit much. I really liked A LOT of what they did to flesh out the story, I tried to keep it more focused on the story and less on giving Jim Carrey several minutes of complete improv sessions.
Intention:
To reign in Jim Carrey as much as possible and keep the story focused on the Grinch and Cindy. I also removed a setup for a subplot that has no payoff since the deleted material for it only appears on the network broadcast cut which is not commercially available at this time.
Other Sources:
How the Grinch Stole Christmas Soundtrack/Score
Release Information:
Digital
Cuts and Additions:
- Trimmed the mail room scene so that when Cindy falls down the chute, Max bites Grinch when he hears that Cindy is in trouble and now instead of the Grinch knowingly leaving her to basically die, once he realizes she's in trouble (thanks to Max), he rolls his eyes and then helps her. No silly fast motion going round and round with Max on his butt and in a way, trying to make Grinch less evil. He's a dick, but he's not going to let a kid die (at least in my version).
- Cut any mention or reference to the lights competition. The full subplot only appears on the network broadcast version.
- Cut out a lot of the Grinch in his lair following his visit to Whoville. It's basically lots of Jim Carrey improv and doesn't progress the story.
- Cut out that the Grinch's baby basket lands in front of a swingers party. We don't see him land, but we know he lands with the old ladies.
- Cut Martha May's line "the muscles" when Cindy is hearing the story of the Grinch going mad when in school.
- Cut more side antics (Grinch hitting himself with a mallet)
- Trim all of the side gags Grinch does to drown out the sounds of Whoville singing. When Cindy arrives, we'll see him getting his head clapped by the giant monkey with the cymbals and move away from blenders with nails and jackhammering around
- Trim some Carrey-esque voices and laughter
- Grinch decides to go to the Centennial celebration and immediately grabs the yodeler. Then we speed up that he is on the fence and Max sends him down the chute.
- Trimmed down the head celebrator stuff just a bit. The conga line is gone, but most of it stays.
- No mistletoe on the butt. He shaves the mayor's head and then kisses him, hence the mistletoe setup works.
- Grinch doesn't burn down the tree. I just felt it was too much of a bad guy move and now sure how anyone could forgive that by the end.
- Cut the action movie running from the explosion gag.
- Cut the Ron Howard directing improv with Grinch and Max. It was originally an improvised joke and Ron loved it and kept it in. I just felt like it was slowing us down from getting to the moment we've been waiting for.....Grinch going to steal Christmas!
- Grinch doesn't make faces at Martha while she's sleeping. He loves her, he's not mad at her and it looks like he only steals her engagement ring as opposed to destroying her house.
- Grinch doesn't hold up Max's butt to the mayor's sleeping face
- Trim down the overly long wretching of the Grinch's heart growing as well as some of the silly voices he does. It's a big moment and I felt that Carrey was still being too super goofy.
- Cut quick reference to the light battle between Martha and Betty Lou
- Cut Grinch busting some moves after Martha says she loves him. Well, I trimmed it a lot.
- Cut Grinch laughing right in the mayor's face that Martha chose him. It just felt like Grinch grew a lot (2 sizes in fact), that I wanted him to be the bigger person considering the mayor was the cause of most of the Grinch's outbursts
- Cut Grinch's final lines because it felt like a more perfect ending that the narrator says he cut the roast and Grinch smiles and everyone applauds and we segue into "Where Are You Christmas" and zoom out of Whoville
- Lots of small trims here and there as well

User reviews

2 reviews
Overall rating
 
9.5
Audio/Video Quality
 
10.0(2)
Audio Editing
 
10.0(2)
Visual Editing
 
9.5(2)
Narrative
 
9.0(2)
Enjoyment
 
9.0(2)
(Updated: December 13, 2022)
Overall rating
 
9.6
Audio/Video Quality
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
10.0
Visual Editing
 
10.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
9.0
While not a favourite of my childhood this is still a film that I have fond memories of, even if I haven't seen the original in at least a decade. I appreciate trimming of much of the juvenile/adult humour (much of it confusing to me at the time) but there are a few things I miss in this version, at least on first viewing. The competitive lighting for example gave Betty more screen time, both making Louie's statement of wanting nothing more than to be around his family feel better paid off and providing significance to her and Martha's actions at the end.

This is unlikely to trouble anybody who (sorry) has never seen the film before, AV quality looked great and I didn't notice any editing missteps. The new transitions (mentioned below) didn't stand out, at least not in the sense of being out of character with the rest of the film, and I am sure that a new viewer could easily think that this is what appeared in cinemas 22 years ago.

User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
Digital
P
Top 50 Reviewer 81 reviews
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful? 0 0
Overall rating
 
9.4
Audio/Video Quality
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
10.0
Visual Editing
 
9.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
9.0
I confess: Jim Carrey gets on my nerves. I refer to his usual comedy persona: he has given some strong performances otherwise (The Truman Show, Man on the Moon), but his schtick gets on my nerves. I guess he's the kind of performer you either find side-splitting funny or you can't stand at all, with no middle ground. So, "de-Carrey-fying" a movie that was essentially a vehicle for his schtick (or become one once he was cast - apparently there were early talks about Tim Curry playing the role, and now THAT I would have loved!) is both, for my tastes, a great idea and one that by its own definition can't go all the way: you can remove his endless improv but his acting style is what it is.

Yet even that way, this edit managed to make Carrey bearable for me. You can't transform his performance, of course, but here it's reduced to pretty much the bare essentials, and once one gets used to how he plays one manages to actually get into the story and to actually enjoy it, beyond "another two hours of Jim Carrey being Jim Carrey". It does help a lot as well that those WTF inappropriate moments added to the story (what was it with the swingers party??? Wasn't this a kids movie???) are gone. In fact this cut removes almost everything I disliked about the film, with the exception of the whole subplot about Martha May having a crush on the Grinch, but I guess one can't have everything. And at least her hypersexualization has been considerably toned down.

Editing itself is done very well, some of the dissolves during the Cheermeister montage called a bit of attention to themselves but that's likely due to the ones present in the original having those fancy transitions that are very hard to replicate. Otherwise editing was invisible.

This is a really good edit that merits more attention. It's two years old now and I'm writing the first review. I guess that both Carrey fans and detractors ignored it for opposite reasons (the first ones for what is gone, the second ones for what remains), but believe me, this is one that can be enjoyed by both camps. I can very well see it become a yearly watch for me. Yes indeed, thanks to MusicEd921 this movie's quality grew three sizes bigger!
Owner's reply January 03, 2022

I can't thank you enough for both your kind words and for taking a gamble on watching this! I hope that some Christmas cheer has been spread with toning down Carrey's performance and leaving what I found to be a really entertaining take on expanding on the Grinch. Thank you and enjoy your holiday season!

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