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FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of How the Grinch Stole Christmas (James Horner)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... on one of the expanded, score-only albums if you can
satisfy yourself with annoyingly haphazard parody zeal supplanted by
fifteen minutes of melodically gorgeous James Horner material at the
climax.
Avoid it... on the original, irritating commercial album unless you demand movie quotes and the obligatory pop songs along with an abbreviated, mediocre presentation of Horner's score.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
How the Grinch Stole Christmas: (James Horner) With
so many audiences familiar with the classic, 22-minute cartoon narrated
by Boris Karloff that has appeared for generations on network television
each Christmas, director Ron Howard was the beneficiary of a studio
bidding war to expand upon that faithful adaptation of the Dr. Seuss
book with his own live action version of 90 minutes in 2000.
Concentrating on meticulous make-up and studio set designs, Howard's
How the Grinch Stole Christmas opens with an hour of background
material about the snowflake town of Whoville and its Grinch before
launching into the more familiar part of the story in its final third.
With these additional revelations about the past of the Grinch,
audiences get a better idea as to why he would be motivated to sneak
down off his mountain of garbage and steal all the Christmas presents
and decorations on the eve of the holiday. One of the main attractions
of the film was the lead performance by Jim Carrey, though his acting
was strangely obscured by the amount of makeup placed on him to mirror
the drawn version of the character. The film wasn't received well,
especially by critics, with the harsh colors, confined settings, and
intentionally blurry photography producing an awkward feel that
dissatisfied the same viewers who would eventually be turned off by
The Polar Express. The marketing blitz surrounding the film
informed weary adults that the big new version of How the Grinch
Stole Christmas was largely a marketing ploy, and one significant
part of that shiny object was the film's soundtrack. Songs from the old
cartoon were interpolated into the film, as were a few new orchestral
and ensemble cast pieces. But with these songs came 'N Sync and Faith
Hill, among others, eventually yielding an extremely disjointed
soundtrack album representing an odd mix of cast songs, rock songs,
dialogue, and orchestral underscore. Along for the journey once again
with Howard was composer James Horner, who contributed to both the song
integration in How the Grinch Stole Christmas as well as the
film's roughly 60 minutes of original score. While Horner is no stranger
to the production of large-scale children's scores for fluffy films,
this endeavor attempted to compete with the film's larger
commercialistic intentions and lost that battle.
As for the merits of that score, Horner was placed into the untenable position of attempting to balance the comedy elements of parody levels with the serious drama and character salvation awaiting audiences at the end of the picture. John Williams had proven with Home Alone and Hook that such a balance could be struck, and Danny Elfman had skirted this territory with a few of his early, popular scores. But Horner, for all his experience in the children's genre, had rarely tackled a holiday score specifically. He addressed Whoville with the appropriate set of tingling, metallic percussion that you'd expect for the holidays, but on the whole, the score doesn't ooze with holiday spirit. Instead, you hear an interesting combination of the dramatic sensibilities that Horner had employed countless times in the past (for both the children's genre and more serious adult topics) and his occasional attempts to dabble in the rhythmically and instrumentally wacky world of Elfman and Rachel Portman. As such, the score is really divided much like the film; the first 40 minutes of flashbacks into the past of the Grinch come with the usual parody techniques that often approach the bizarre. Source ensemble songs imitate fart and theremin sounds and present delirious solos for orchestral players who likely don't have as much fun recording your everyday film scores. The integration of Vangelis' Chariots of Fire into "Cheermeister Vote" is representative of a creative avenue of thought rare for Horner by 2000. Most of this comedy material, often flirting with hints of danger that inevitably include Horner's famous four-note "danger motif," has been heard throughout his career, though it should be noted that the ensemble performance in How the Grinch Stole Christmas is quite robust and well-mixed. Even in the adaptation of Vangelis' theme for the aforementioned parody track, the performance is impressively deep. The resonating performances especially aid the later tracks. Horner's primary two themes for the film, the first of which owing much to Home Alone in the simplistic main melody of "Christmas, Why Can't I Find You" and adapted into the cast and Faith Hill songs, receive significant attention in the latter half of the score. Even Horner's more obnoxious mischief theme for the Grinch, a perpetual annoyance up until "Does Cindy Lou Really Ruin Christmas?," matures to impressively redemptive ends in the final cues. As the film transitions to the story seen in both the book and the original cartoon, Horner kicks his score into high gear. The percussive creativity of "The Big Heist," accompanied by brilliant employment of brass accents, is a highlight of the mischief theme. Thereafter, the score turns completely serious, offering a dramatic sensitivity consistent with Bicentennial Man and rambling piano foreshadowing A Beautiful Mind, especially with the employment of a light choir that is so fluid as to almost sound synthetic. Its humming in the gorgeous "A Change of Heart" will remind of the haunting, sorrowful theme from Casper. A crescendo of synthetic backing for this theme in the same cue previews some of the spiritual depth of The New World. In this and "The Sleigh of Presents," Horner provides considerable beauty and rewards listeners who may have lost patience with the wacky side of the score. The last fifteen minutes truly compensate for over forty minutes of mediocre material from Horner for the flashback portion of the film, as well as the rather lackluster song variants of the main theme. Enthusiasts of Horner's children's scores and lighter dramas will find significant merit hidden in these passages, the crescendo of wholesomeness closing "The Sleigh of Presents" a remarkable moment. Luckily, despite the ills of the commercial album for How the Grinch Stole Christmas, that product does contain those fifteen or so best minutes of Horner's score material. Otherwise, however, that original Interscope album truly was a nightmare before Christmas in 2000. It was a Horner fan's worst fear, with only thirty minutes of narratively challenged score designated for the product. Ten of those minutes exist under the editing of vocals and dialogue by cast members. The remaining twenty minutes of score is amplified so that there is occasional interference in the treble region when the orchestra performs in full. And then, to lighten things up, Interscope sprinkled six or so excerpts of uninteresting movie dialogue throughout the rest of the album, nestling them in between attempts to appeal to the mass of thirteen-year-old Dr. Seuss fans with some rap, alternative, pop, and funk songs, as well as the obligatory, unshaven sex objects, 'N Sync. Finally, the late stages of production of the album were marked with unintelligible packaging, including issues with the track listings. In short, the die-hard Horner fan was provided with a somewhat futile and useless product, as the composer's portion is easily consumed by the other elements of the soundtrack. In the end, the Interscope Records album is very much like Jim Carrey's personality; never defining itself with clear direction. Since that label did not produce score albums, typically publishing rock, R&B, pop, rap, funk, gospel, and alternative music, it's no surprise that they lost touch with Horner's effort in their attempts to boost the marketability of the product. Horner fans didn't have much time to complain, however, because How the Grinch Stole Christmas represented one of the quickest releases of a promotional score that the community had ever seen at the time, with bootlegs of that leaked material appearing on the secondary market within only two weeks of Interscope's album release. Even Apollo 13, the other commonly questioned commercial product for Horner in that era, took several months for Universal to crank out the score-only promo. It's not clear if the expanded album was truly a promotional effort put forth by Horner and/or the studio after witnessing the botched commercial album, or if it was born as just another black-market bootleg from conveniently leaked master mixes. The answer doesn't matter, for it served as immediate testimony to the failure of that first album. In this case, however, more of this score doesn't automatically make it better. The material on the commercial album is mostly centered around the final thirty minutes of the film (the traditional part of the story), and these compositions are as good as it gets from Horner for How the Grinch Stole Christmas. When you hear more of the shorter, parody-style of cues for the earlier portions of the film, you get the impression that the work really was one of Horner's weakest efforts in a number of years. It fails to stir any genuine feelings of Christmas, and never does it establish a strong musical idea outside of the mischief motif for the Dr. Seuss character. The comical edge of the score does not allow it to flow as smoothly as Horner typically prefers, and the slapstick elements of the orchestra's performance make the promo equally unpredictable and difficult to digest. The expanded album does, though, allow some of Horner's more creative moments to shine; the integration of Chariots of Fire into "Cheermeister Vote," which was absent from the commercial album, is one of its highlights. Cues that were hidden behind dialogue on the commercial album were offered unhindered. In 2022, La-La Land Records took essentially the same music and rearranged it slightly for a very similar presentation on a limited, single-CD product with no bonus tracks but superb sound. These score albums of 70+ minutes in length cannot salvage a flawed Horner work, though, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas relies solely on the majesty of its final, lovely cues to reach your heart.
TRACK LISTINGS:
2000 Interscope Album:
Total Time: 76:51
2000 Promotional Album: Total Time: 71:22
* contains theme from Chariots of Fire by Vangelis 2022 La-La Land Album: Total Time: 72:33
* contains "Happy Who-Lidays" ** contains excerpt from "Welcome Christmas," composed by Albert Hague and Ted Geisel
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 2000 Interscope album includes countless credits but no lyrics or
extra information about the score. Original copies of the 2000 promotional album have no
packaging. The insert of the 2022 La-La Land product contains details about both the
film and score.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from How the Grinch Stole Christmas are Copyright © 2000, 2022, Interscope Records, Promotional, La-La Land Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 11/14/00 and last updated 1/25/23. |
