Dr Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Dr Seuss's squiggly sketches and early learning doggerel appear to have come straight off the top of his head. This Hollywood version captures precisely that endearing spirit of imaginative doodling, at least when Carrey's anti-hero is on screen. A shaggy, potbellied green yeti with an attitude problem, the Grinch lives in the rubbish dump and casts a baleful eye over the ersatz yuletide 'Who-bilation' of the rodent featured Whos in their suburban Shangri-La, Whoville. This toyshop grotto society is a caricature of consumerism, a town embodying such a level of superficiality that only a child, Cindy Lou, can see through it. She doesn't understand why the Grinch is excluded from the party, and even gets him nominated for 'Holiday Cheermeister'. Big mistake. Howard's film develops the story with ingenuity, subverting acceptable sentiment with lashings of sardonic wit. Smartly melding cartoon backdrops and kitsch carnivalesque production design, this cinematic candy floss honours the Seussian universe by satirising our own. And Carrey's comic tornado of a performance is a triumph.