November 20, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – I have a worthy Christmas present for LifeSite readers – the movie, Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch.
With our children long grown up now, my wife and I love to indulge in dinner and a movie on Saturday evenings. That is what we call our “date night” – after many years of few “dates” given the numerous responsibilities of raising eight children and my work that has involved lots of travel and attending weekend events.
The trick, however, has been to find movies worth seeing.
Lately, there has hardly been anything that we would feel justified in forking out the cost of 2 tickets other than to want to be assaulted by non-stop vulgarity, explicit sex scenes, gross violence or just generally awful plots and acting. That has happened several times in the past few years when we went to a movie that I did not properly vet before venturing into the theatre. Big mistake. Well, last Saturday we hit the jackpot again when we saw Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch.
My wife normally does not at all like animated movies, but this one stole her heart and had us laughing numerous times. It really is a dazzling gem for young and old. Children, parents, and grandparents will love it. Why? It gorgeously conveys the joy of Christmas and one cannot help but leave the theater with a hop and a skip and overall warm Christmassy feeling.
There is a Santa Claus theme throughout the movie, but he never appears, and most amazing, the real meaning of Christmas, the birth of the Christ Child, is duly noted in snippets of about five explicitly Christian hymns that are sung by a Whoville choir during different parts of the movie.
The Grinch is a solitary, mean, anti-Christmas grouch who can’t stand all this horrible Christmas joy and is determined to wreck Christmas for all the inhabitants of Whoville. The story revolves around this Christmas-deprived and, as we learn, love-deprived solitary figure who is not nearly as nasty as the script writers could have made him out to be.
I won’t give away much more than that other than to say the movie is filled with virtue, many endearing characters and first-class animation. There are a lot of wonderful life lessons, given in a very entertaining, visually rich manner in The Grinch, that are a Christmas treasure.
Benedict Cumberbatch plays a winning role as the voice of the Grinch. That amazed me given all the action movies and serious roles that I have seen him play in many other movies. He must have had a ball doing this one.
Focus on the Family’s Plugged in movie review states, “This version of the Grinch's tale is well made, as clean as a crisp snow on a Sunday morning. It's honeyed with uplifting messages about the importance of friendship and family.”
So, give yourself a pickup in these wearisome times, and go see The Grinch. Unless you are a grinch yourself, you are guaranteed to leave the theatre with warm fuzzies and a reinforced understanding of what Christmas is really all about (hint: not presents).
