tek's rating: meh and a half

Dr. Seuss' The Grinch Musical!, on NBC
A.V. Club; IMDb; NBC; TV Tango; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Peacock

This aired on December 9, 2020, the first musical NBC has aired since Easter 2018. But unlike their other musicals over the past several years, this one wasn't broadcast live. (I assume it probably would have been, if not for the Covid-19 pandemic.) And I'm afraid I must say, I didn't much care for it. It had three familiar songs: two from the 1966 animated special and one from the 2000 movie, but most of the songs were unfamiliar to me. (Actually, I had heard one on Thanksgiving during the Macy's Parade.) I thought they all sounded kind of okay, even if I could only make out less than half of the lyrics. But none of them were particularly great or memorable. I did get a few chuckles out of the show, but the only one I specifically remember was a social distancing reference. Most of the movie I found somewhat boring. Though I will say this, some of the dancing was fun to watch. And the costumes were... interesting. But overall, the story was too thin. If you've seen any previous adaptation of Dr. Seuss's book, you already know the bulk of the story, and the bits that were added to make it movie-length mostly weren't really worth it, IMO. But another interesting thing is we actually got to see three versions of Max the dog. There's an old one, narrating the story, and a younger one taking part in the story (and the two of them frequently interacted with each other, which was weird). There was also a very brief scene with Max as a puppy, I guess, who ran away from home before being taken in by the Grinch. Aside from that I can't think of anything to say, except that the Grinch was played by Matthew Morrison (from Glee).

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