| 100 |
Boston Globe
Jay Carr
With Carrey hitting a career peak, this Grinch doesn't steal Christmas; it restores the season by helping energize us enough to make it through the whole thing.
|
| 91 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
He's (Carrey) a marvelous Grinch in this spirited, bustling and mostly faithful spin on Seuss.
|
| 88 |
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
Deliriously inventive.
|
| 80 |
Film.com
Robert Horton
Carrey is an actor possessed. He's brilliant.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Opulence almost interferes with the movie, weighing it down when it should seem lighter than air, surrounding the inarguably brilliant Carrey with too much frosting and frou-frou.
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Carrey is excellent, making the most of his comic gifts even in a cumbersome Grinch outfit, and the eye-spinning color scheme is dazzling to behold.
|
| 70 |
Chicago Reader
Lisa Alspector
Entrancingly lurid live-action fantasy.
|
| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
Not likely to become any landmark achievement, yet it's sure to earn a berth among the perennial Christmas film classics.
|
| 67 |
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
If anything, the real surprise here is how affecting he makes the Grinch's ultimate big hearted turnaround, as Carrey the actor sneaks up on Carrey the wild man dervish. In whichever mode, he carreys the movie.
|
| 63 |
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
By far the best and cutest thing about How the Grinch Stole Christmas is the dog Max.
|
| 63 |
San Francisco Examiner
Wesley Morris
Leave it to Ron Howard to turn a plaintive Dr. Seuss ditty into a C-grade Tim Burton psychodrama.
|
| 60 |
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
One overstuffed movie, but it's by no means a turkey.
|
| 60 |
TV Guide
Steve Simels
A smartly stylized hoot.
|
| 50 |
Dallas Observer
Luke Y. Thompson
The scenes involving just him (Carrey) are funny and full of life. All the other scenes are not.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
Mike Clark
Overproduced and essentially charmless.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Peter Stack
Overall, the film sparkles. But it's a curiously unaffecting sparkle, an example, almost, of how the special effects stole Christmas.
|
| 50 |
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
The movie rises to another level whenever its star has a chance to cut loose -- leading the ensemble in a conga line, winning a sack race in slow motion, torching the Whos' Christmas tree while screaming, "Burn baby burn."
|
| 50 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
It's a big stuffed turkey of a movie, just in time for the holidays.
|
| 50 |
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Noisy, random and hard on the eyes.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
I am not a mind-reader and cannot be sure, but I think a lot of children are going to look at this movie with perplexity and distaste. It's just not much fun.
|
| 40 |
Film.com
Sean Means
The heart of this movie isn't two sizes too small; it's just slightly misplaced.
|
| 38 |
Baltimore Sun
Chris Kaltenbach
Misfires on nearly every possible level.
|
| 30 |
LA Weekly
Hazel-Dawn Dumpert
This new feature has replaced the original's benevolence, taste and wit with cynicism, armpit humor and manic, desperately unfunny padding.
|
| 25 |
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
The dullest, clunkiest, big-budget fantasy since Steven Spielberg flattened Peter Pan in "Hook."
|
| 20 |
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
It's not Christmas that's being stolen here. It's the spirit of Dr. Seuss.
|
| 20 |
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
You will not like it on the screen, you will not like it -- not one scene!
|
| 20 |
Slate
David Edelstein
Profoundly unnecessary -- cluttered, padded even at 90 minutes, indifferently narrated by Anthony Hopkins, and consistently misdirected by Ron Howard.
|
| 20 |
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Shrill, strenuous and entirely without charm, Ron Howard's attempt at a Christmas classic is an elaborately wrapped empty box that will fool many people into buying it but will not greatly please its recipients.
|
| 20 |
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
So clogged with kooky gadgetry and special effects and glitter and goo that watching it feels like being gridlocked at Toys "R" Us during the Christmas rush.
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