- Time
- (Edited)
- Post link
Hello all. I’m relatively new to the fan edit scene and, being that I lack an ability to edit anything myself, I’m throwing this out for anyone interested and with some time this holiday break…
Has anyone ever tried to re-edit the Ron Howard and Jim Carrey live action Grinch film? It being the silly season and all, I happened to see it recently and, man, what a perfect candidate for some judicious trimming and snipping.
In general, I really dislike the overly zany cartoony style Howard shot the film (although I doubt much can be done about that), as well as the bloated run time, but there are plenty of scenes throughout that capture the magic and heart of the original Seuss story and the Chuck Jones animated TV special.
More specific things I’d suggest:
-
trimming the omni-presence of the Mayor of Whoville and Clint Howard as his aide
-
removing that awful song Cindy Lou Who sings so badly “Where are you Christmas?”
-
removing the heavy-handed message of the film, whose “Whos” are hopped up on rampant commercialism and have lost the true meaning of Christmas (a theme which only serves to take the focus away from the Grinch’s transformational arc)
-
cutting Cindy Lou’s line to the Grinch “Uh, maybe you need a time out” and the awful pause that ensues where the audience is meant fall over laughing
-
finding some way to begin the film on Mt. Crumpit with the Grinch, instead of with the Who’s shopping
-
possibly over-dubbing Jim Carrey’s overblown performance of “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch” with one of the many cover versions out there, or the Thurl Ravenscroft original from the old Grinch cartoon.
-
and this is a personal preference thing, but I find the random adult humor and innuendoes (e.g. the new father finding his baby on the doorstep “Honey, he looks just like your boss” or the Grinch falling face first into a woman’s cleavage) to be wildly out of place in what should be a kid’s/family pic.
-
some of the daytime scenes in Whoville are also too dark. It makes it seem as if there’s no passage of time in the film, that it all takes place in one long, long day.
-
this last one may be tough, but the constant cock-eyed angles for some scenes are very disruptive. One minute you’re in closeup and the next it’s a wider angle where the shot is tilted to make it “fun” and “trippy”.