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STUDIO: Warner Home Video
MSRP: $29.99
RATED: Not Rated
RUNNING TIME: 26 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Pencil Test
• Featurettes
• Commentaries
• Digital Copy

The Pitch

Local green monster steals from children.


The Humans

Boris Karloff, Thurl Ravenscroft and June Foray

The Nutshell

The Grinch has become one of those iconic Christmas figures. Taking his place in pop culture as the Anti-Santa, Seuss’ creation stands as a long green finger pointing at Christmas tradition. That is until the forced change of heart and the kid-friendly ending. Maybe it’s just me, but I would’ve liked to see the Grinch take a Yuletide crap over Who-Ville. Oh well, enough of my negative revisionism.


Even mutant hamster kids make too much noise.

The Lowdown

Dr. Seuss became an international publishing superstar with the release of How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Sure, he had a following with several previous hits. But, this release is what made him a name. The Grinch became this childhood monster associated with the all greed and evil material desires in our heart. He was the big devious bastard that dwelt in the shadows waiting to ruin your Holiday season.


First I’ll do the hat. Then, I’ll make a woman suit out of the chick in my basement.

Yet, the Grinch was a figure that was open for redemption. The Ron Howard live-action version took the redemption angle to newly forced heights by writing in a childhood tragedy origin for the character. Do we need to know so much about the big green Karloff-voiced creation? No. All the audience needs to know is that he’s a foul creature that can’t abide cheer.

The original artwork by Chuck Jones comes to life with the refreshing hues and clean contrast of the character designs. Warner Brothers went back to the original source material and cleaned up years of degradation to provide the best vision of this Holiday Classic. If you want to do a great comparison, grab any of the DVD releases for this title. Go to the fourteenth minute marker and match up the scene below. Max comes across as a yellow-brown on the DVD with only one clear fake antler. There’s also the fact that the frame has been opened for added depth.


Compare this frame to any of the DVDs. Let this be your Seuss Color Bars.

The Dolby 2.0 surround audio track is the exact same as the previous DVD releases. So, don’t go looking for anything new there. The special features are exact ports over from the previous DVDs. But, you also get a digital copy. I want to know who is really impressed by the rise of Digital Copies. They help on certain titles, but do we need to have travel-ready versions of all the flicks we buy?


Max: 1962-1966

Warner Brothers seems to have achieved a new record with this disc. Breaking down the storage space and the requirements of this release, there’s a lot of wasted space. Only seven gigs of a twenty-five gig disc are used for this Blu-Ray. Why couldn’t Warner Brothers see fit to dig up classic Seuss Holiday specials and related materials? You’ve got to have a reason to spend twenty or twenty-five dollars on this release. A single cartoon and some supplementals can only go so far.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a classic. But, that’s not enough to get its own Blu-Ray disc. When the price deeps closer to ten or fifteen bucks…that’ll be cost effective. It’s just a shame that WB saw fit to go for that Holiday gouge. The rating below pertains more the actual feature than my problems with the price to content ratio.


He’s not having a charge of heart. He’s about to go Nuklo all over Stamford.

The Package

How the Grinch Stole Christmas comes to Blu-Ray with a VC-1 encoded transfer. All of the features are ported over from the last Special Edition DVD. The commentaries with animator Phil Roman and June Foray help to setup all that follows. There’s a Phil Hartman hosted TNT documentary that explains the origins of the Grinch. There’s a pencil test that shows Chuck Jones’ creation of the show. Plus, you get a ton of featurettes about the design of Whoville to the music to Thurl Ravenscroft and his legendary voice. This is a must-buy. 

8.3 out of 10