The Grinch Musical or All of Whoville is Out on This Disaster

The Holiday Season has set in. Whether you’re the biggest Holiday fan in the world, or a real life Grinch, we all have complaints about this time of year. Bloggin Hood is right there with you. From December 14th-25^th, enjoy the 12 Days of Blogmas, with consecutive posts ranting on various Christmas and other holiday topics. Remember, you can like something and still find something to complain about, as long as you look hard enough. Today, you should look away, as we discuss the Grinch Musical.

Despite what every Christmas special would have you believe, not everything is perfect around the holidays. People try to capitalize on the holidays in the worst ways. There’s even some sick bastards out there who ruin the holidays for children. These people are truly the lowest of the low. There’s different levels of scum, ranging from telling a small child Santa isn’t real ¹* to present thieves. These crimes are unforgivable.

Last Tuesday, I witnessed the biggest crime against the holidays in decades – The Grinch Musical. This was a measured attack on Christmas and children’s joy. There’s no other explanation for it. NBC aired the special and must pay for this. If the network doesn’t understand our outrage, they’ll defile another classic next year. Imagine “A Christmas Story Musical” starting Logan Paul as Ralphie. Nothing is sacred to these hacks.

We need to boycott NBC now. Everyone should delete the Peacock App immediately. I don’t care how many good sitcoms are on there. We need decisive, swift action against this disgrace. Flood twitter with reviews of this “musical”. I don’t even care if you use mine. Justice must be served.

I won’t mention boycotting the actual channel because it’s 2020. If anybody regularly watches network TV at this point, they probably enjoyed the musical and want a part 2. Heathens, I tell you. Heathens!

The Grinch wasn’t a big part of my childhood. I saw it as a kid, but it wasn’t an annual tradition as it is for many families. For many, this is their favorite Christmas movie. While there’s debate over the cartoon or the Jim Carey version (I’d go cartoon) ², it deserved better than this. There’s car wrecks more graceful than this monstrosity.

I suppose ranting like a lunatic doesn’t prove my point*** ³. By my count, there were 3 reasons why the Grinch musical was an abomination. Rather than dance around the topic, I want to attack it head first. The sooner this write up is over, the sooner I can drink away the memories.

The article is not sponsored by Kraken Rum, but we’d be honored to. Remember, Bloggin Hood will never sell out, unless I get even the slightest offer.

Why is this a musical?

This complaint doesn’t seem fair. In many ways, it’s like complaining about the sun being hot and water being wet. The difference is that the Grinch didn’t have to be a musical. It could have been anything. Hell, the network could have left it alone and not committed a crime against children.

For whatever reason, live musicals on en vogue for the major Networks. It started a few years ago with the Sound of Music Live and every year or so, we get another one. Maid Megan, an avid musical fan, has watched most of these. While musicals aren’t in my wheel house, they were well done. I get why networks put live musicals on the air. It brings eyes to the network for a special event, and ropes them in to the next one… As long as it’s good.

The previous musicals were on either NBC or FOX and lifted straight from Broadway. In addition to the Sound of Music, NBC aired Jesus Christ, Superstar. Fox countered with live versions of Rent and Grease. For the most part, these performances got good reviews. The formula is pretty simple. A network gets the rights to an established, successful musical, and hires talented performers for the roles. The script for these musicals will have minor edits for content, but otherwise, remains in tact. As long as you have good performers, the musical will be successful.

That’s it. That’s the whole formula. Established Script + Talented Performers = Good Show.

NBC decided this time, it only needed 50% of the equation to make a good show. The performers had good voices. There was one member of the chorus who sang operatic for some reason, but otherwise, the cast could hold a note. They just forgot the whole script thing.

The Grinch is a poem that became a movie. It is, in no way, suited for a musical. There’s only one memorable song in the original, and a second one was added to the Jim Carrey version. I’d argue most people only remember the classic Grinch song, but I’ll give them two.

This means that writers had to create a ton of original songs for the musical. At minimum, it was a dozen, and it’s likely more. If you’re going to create this much original music, why wouldn’t you just make an original Christmas story? I mean, Christmas movies are all basically the same anyway. Instead, new music was create to defile the classic. Trust me, none of the original songs work, and they manage to ruin the one classic of the original movie (we’ll get there). Maybe planning a musical during a pandemic was a bad idea. Keep in mind this wasn’t live**** ⁴; any misfires could have been reshot. This was the best version they could produce.

I’ll be completely honest, I did not know there was a Grinch Musical on Broadway until halfway through this article. This was so bad, I assumed it was an original production. It was not. The Grinch Musical was on Broadway in 2006. I thought there were higher standards for Broadway shows. My criticisms stand; this script had to be panned in 2006 and NBC thought it would work in 2020. It did not.

I think the biggest issue with the musical format is the target audience. The Grinch is a family movie, but most kids don’t have interest in musicals. Kids might enjoy the songs in movies, but this feels like way too much. I don’t think adults would be the target demographic, unless Fox was shooting for nostalgia. Honestly, the only demographic hit is the angry blogger subset. What do you know? This ended up in my wheelhouse after all.

Max Did Not Translate Well

About a year ago, one of the networks released The Little Mermaid Musical. This was one of the few musicals that received bad reviews. Part of the issue were the performances, including Shaggy as Sebastian. Shaggy wore a red coat instead of a costume and barely sang. Rumors of him denying the poor performance by saying “It wasn’t me” are both unconfirmed and hilarious.

While I didn’t watch much of this, my biggest issue was Flounder’s portrayal. Instead of getting an actor to play him, Flounder was a nightmarish animatronic. He would fit into the Five Nights at Freddy Universe. Poor Flounder was a background character who barely appeared according to the reviews. This was one of the most important characters in the movie. It was a damn shame. I was so offended by something I didn’t watch, I recorded the first Bloggin Hood mini Rant on it.

When the Grinch musical was announced, I wondered how they would handle Max. Max is the Grinch’s loyal dog, but fell into the Flounder Trap. Max is essential to the story, more so than Flounder even, but how do you portray a silent dog with an actor? The answer may surprise you.

The musical flips Max on his head – choosing to make an older Max the narrator. I actually didn’t have an issue with this, in theory. This gives Max an active, speaking role in the story. Had they used some sort of animatronic for the “current” Max and left the older Max as the narrator, I could have lived with it. You know, as long as the animatronic wasn’t something out of Lovecraft.

Instead, the play has three different actors play Max. In arguably the worst part of the play, our second musical number is Max sings about his life before the start of the show. We meet Puppy Max for 15 seconds, portrayed by a child. Afterwards, we’re introduced to Young Max, who interacts with the Grinch for the whole play.

All three of these actors have some of the worst costumes I’ve ever seen. I’m not really one to criticize wardrobes. I don’t have any style and zero design creativity. But every Max costumes looks like somebody put together their Halloween costume 10 minutes before a party.

This will haunt my dreams for a decade.

The three actors all play Max as some sort of half man, half dog hybrid. At times, the characters walk on all fours and there’s an uncomfortable amount of “tail wagging”. I get that in the cartoon, Max is a typical dog, but you’ve decided all versions of the pup will have a speaking role. Once that’s established, you can’t have it both ways. Seeing grown men crawl on all fours and hide with their butts out for display was uncomfortable at best. I don’t know what the best way to handle Max was, but this wasn’t it.

Another idiotic decision was having the narrator and young Max interact. The narrator inserted himself randomly into scenes when the young Max was present. How the hell does that make sense? I legit do not know if that was just for humor, or if the other characters could see the narrator. Look, I get it’s not serious, but that was a bizarre choice. It’s bad enough there’s one dog suit man running around, I didn’t need two.

I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but Flounder got off easy. At least his injustice didn’t create a time paradox.

They Ruined “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”

They had to nail “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”. Technically, this is the only song from the original movie. This is the song everyone looks forward to. It gets radio play during the holidays. Universally, it’s beloved. As a person with issues on many, many Christmas tunes, I actually like this one.

Naturally, the NBC performance butchered the song, stemming from a baffling directorial choice. The song starts off well. The narrator hits all of the notes he needed to and it feels like the classic. Again, the singing in the musical was on point. That should be the toughest part of get right. For about a minute, it looks like the Grinch Musical is turning a corner.

And then they decide to have the Grinch upend the song by farting. He straight up farts, which causes the narrator and Yong Max to recoil, shaking their butts in the air. If that wasn’t uncomfortable enough, there is a dance number which includes both Max’s dancing with each other. After the song, the Grinch continuously exits and enters the scene, thanking the audience directly as if he won a Grammy for ripping ass.

What the Hell NBC?

I am not a mature man. Half of my posts on this website are about Ducktales or Darkwing Duck.***** ⁵ But why the hell did we need this? Was this humor for the kids that stopped paying attention 45 minutes ago? It was a really, REALLY stupid choice in a series of bad ones. I hope the Broadway version didn’t have this.

I was always out on the musical pretty early, but this was the biggest death knell I’ve seen in a while.

There was a simple solution to many of the issues that plague the Grinch Musical. Just show the frigging movie! I mean, NBC had to acquire the Grinch license to put on the musical. Why not just go for the actual, enjoyable versions of the story?

Hell, you could have gotten all three movies and played one a night as a Grinch themes weekend event. I think Grinch lovers would have been in on that. They could debate the merits of their favorite version, and maybe find something to like about the other ones. Wouldn’t that be nice?

But, as always, we can’t have nice thing. Instead of an enjoyable Grinch film, we got the musical equivalent of being shat on by a pigeon. I hate everything about this musical. I feel bad for the actors, as this will be the end of all of their careers. The only good to come of this is I expect the writers and producers will be charged with crimes against the American people. Justice will be served.

Speaking of justice, please tweet at NBC #justiceforMax. He deserves it. I recommend #justiceforFlouder as well. I’m still pissed at that. Yesterday’s Review, the Spirit of Christmas, was significantly better than this, and that movie didn’t have an ending.

Rating – Stink, Stank, Stunk /10

Don’t worry, tomorrow’s post isn’t a review of a Christmas special. It’ll probably be angry, but at least it’s a different anger. We’re versatile here at Bloggin Hood.

You can watch the Grinch Musical at NBC.com if you really, really want to hate the holidays.

1. *How can people not believe in Santa? His picture was in yesterday’s blog. Some people are crazy conspiracy nuts.
2. **There’s also a newer cartoon version starting Benedict Cumberbatch. I’m not sure how that one is, but is seemed unnecessary. I guess people love making the Grinch.
3. ***It’s effective in politics though.
4. ****Despite the official title being – Dr Suess’ the Grinch Musical Live!, this was not a live performance. So it sucked and they lied. Cool.
5. ***** There’s been a lot of Darkwing info and rumors of late. I can’t discuss it because I am a jinx. Disney announced about 200 shows earlier this month, and there was no Darkwing news. I feel liek I could have jinx it. If you care, please watch the following Ducktales Special. Trust me, this is what the holidays are about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dw44RV4-tY