Review: The Grinch - Charming tale that will please the younger members of the family

Six weeks away from Christmas and with The Nutcracker already getting the feast of festive film underway, this week the whole family headed  to Tralee Omniplex to catch the latest in holiday reboots , a return to animated form for that well known Christmas grouch , The Grinch.
Illumination Entertainment's adaptation of the classic Dr. Seuss tale, has already scored the all-time biggest opening weekend for a Christmas movie in the US earning $66 million during its first three days and hopes were high among the younger members of our cinema posse as we embarked on what was sure to be a christmas cracker to get us all in the festive mood.
The film tells the famous tale of the Grinch (voiced Benedict Cumberbatch) who hatches a sneaky scheme with his trusted canine Max to ruin this year’s Christmas when the residents of Whoville plan to make their annual holiday three times bigger that year. While the Grinch plots his plan, a young girl Cindy Lou Who plans to seek out Santa Claus to thank him for helping her widowed mother  every Christmas, but little does she know she is trying to blow the Grinch's cover.
The family friendly film is such a strong genre that often as the dust settles on a year of cinematic exploits, there is always a family film lingering in the top ten list of favourite movies of the year. Paddington 2 from last year still stands up as one of the best of 2018 and one worthy of repeated viewing. More often than not, the family film has enough ingredients to dazzle the younger members of the family whilst simultaneously entertaining the older members resulting in a pleasant experience for all. Unfortunately with the Grinch although the younger members are well catered for with dazzling animation, plenty of slapstick and a silliness that's safe and lacks anything that may scare the younger demographic also serves up a film that can be bland at times lacking the characteristics that make these films so appealing. Whereas Jim Carrey chose to unsettle and overegg his performance as the Grinch, this animated version which visually looks terrific is a bit too vanilla in flavour with Benedict Cumberbatch never really convincing us that he is really all that bad to begin with!
It does feel at times that the production is so polished and perfect that it somewhat takes the charm from this well loved yuletide tale.
That said, however, the Grinch is still a pleasant 90 minutes of sweet and sugary colourful fun that young children will love and whilst not groundbreaking by any means is a holiday trip that all will  enjoy!
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