items tagged with Dr. Seuss How the Grinch Stole Christmas

PROJECT X

In director Nima Nourizadeh’s teen comedy Project X, three nerdy high-school pals in North Pasadena decide to make names for themselves by throwing a wild party, and then throw the party.

Now that we’ve dispensed with the plot, let me try to explain why, through almost its entire running length, this movie made me want to repeatedly plunge an ice pick through my skull.

BRUCE ALMIGHTY

It’s been almost 18 months since Jim Carrey last graced the cineplex, but that was in the schmaltzy piece of doggerel The Majestic, so it barely counts. For full-out, Carrey-sized insanity, you have to go back to 2000’s Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but that barely counts either, as he was buried beneath pounds of latex and inevitably forced to water down his act for kiddie consumption.

BOUNCE

Writer-director Don Roos might never be a great filmmaker – his staging is obvious in that Kevin Smith way (a lot of two-shots of characters talking) and there’s no real visual life on display. But he’s wonderful with actors, and he has a great ear for dialogue, writing realistic lines that can flip in a moment’s notice to something truly comic or poignant.