The Grinch Review: 3 Ups & 6 Downs

2. The Solid Animation

What mostly makes The Grinch easy to sit through is its bright, colourful animation.

It's certainly not at a Pixar level of ingenuity by any means, and the strange motion blur effect Illumination applies to all of their movies still feels wildly unnecessary, but the general level of polish is impressive all the same.

Whoville in particular is gorgeously rendered and feels very much alive, while the volume of The Grinch's fur has a mind-boggling amount of detail, and if you look closely, you can even see faint hair on the faces of the Whos, which is a neat touch.

It's disappointing that the spritely visuals aren't given a stronger script to work with, but they at least ensure the movie is a vibrant light-show even when it's not really working.