The next animated feature from the studio behind Despicable Me is one of the most despicable characters in literature, Dr. Suess' Grinch. The first trailer for the new feature has arrived and it shows us a movie that, while clearly inspired by the classic book and the follow-up Christmas special that we all love, adds it's own particular flare, or as The Grinch himself puts it, he's going to do mean things, with style. Check out the new trailer below.
The trailer opens with the perfect little Illumination studio easter egg, as The Grinch's alarm clock starts playing the song "Happy," the Pharrell Williams tune that was nominated for an Oscar from Despicable Me 2. Obviously, such sentiments are not the sort of thing that The Grinch appreciates, leading to his attempts to destroy the clock. From there, The Grinch heads down into Whoville to do some grocery shopping, and also, simply mess with people because, he's the Grinch, and that's how he roles.
While this is the first time we've seen the Grinch done with computer animation, it's still a very familiar feeling movie. The animation is based on the art style of the original Dr. Suess book, and while things have never looked quite so bright and colorful, there's no mistaking what we're seeing. However, one thing that has become as iconic as the character himself is the song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" from the original 1966 TV special. If you were hoping for a new version of that song to appear in the new film, you don't need to wait to find out, as the song is featured all through the trailer.
However, everything else we see in the trailer promises a different story than the one from 1966. Similar to the 2000 live-action film starring Jim Carrey, it appears the plan for The Grinch to fill out a feature-length runtime is to give us a lot of story setup before the stealing of Christmas that we know is coming. If the opening of the trailer is the opening of the movie, then the movie starts on December 20 and will give us a few days of lead-in to the major events. We see that The Grinch visits Whoville regularly if only to get his shopping done. He's not treated differently as far as we can see. In the 2000 film he was something of an outcast, but here it looks like he'd be welcome. We do know that we'll see the character as a child as well, so we'll likely see what made him so mean then.
Benedict Cumberbatch sounds great as the voice of the title character, though he sounds very unlike himself.
So far, The Grinch looks like it could be a lot of fun. We'll find out when the movie hits theaters this November.
