Watching movies with your family, a Christmas tree glowing while you sip on hot chocolate. Many would describe this feeling when thinking about the holiday season. Classics like Home Alone and The Santa Clause have ruled over the Christmas season for a while now. One of these classics, The Grinch, celebrated its live action 25th anniversary this year. However, since then, other iterations of The Grinch have shown up on the big screen, such as the Illumination movie from 2018. So, this begs the question: does the 2000 release of this holiday classic still hold up? 

While many people are familiar with the 1960s cartoon iteration, 2000’s The Grinch stars Jim Carrey as the titular character. Jim Carrey’s performance as the Grinch is extremely humorous and fits the role quite well, as the grumpy green creature sets off to steal Christmas in the most ridiculous way possible. Nostalgic moments such as the Grinch slinking around the Who homes to steal Christmas being extremely accurate to the original film. The costume is accurate and brings the Grinch to the real world quite well. The costume looks exactly like the storybook brought to life, which is beneficial to viewer immersion and nostalgia. The humor is also on point, with Jim Carrey’s sense of humor shining through his role during the entire movie. 

Despite the movie doing a lot of things right, it has quite a few downsides. The movie is an hour and forty five minutes, about three times the original runtime of the 1960s film, which ran for thirty minutes. This made the story feel less tight and storybook-like, which affects the nostalgia factor for viewers, and can make the movie feel dragged out. Also, original scenes to keep the movie going took some viewers out of the movie, which hurts the immersion of the film. 

In comparison to the other Grinch movies, both the original 1960s cartoon and the 2018 Illumination film, this movie holds its own. While it does not have that storybook feel that the original does, it was well adapted for the big screen. In my opinion, it does a better job at succeeding the original film, as it feels more faithful to the source material than the 2018 film does, as the 2018 film felt more tailored to a new generation rather than being faithful to the book. 

All in all, while the nostalgia factor may be affected for many viewers during this film, The Grinch (2000) holds up well to this day, combining original content with faithfulness to the source material, giving people another great movie to enjoy during the holiday season.