The Grinch won’t be happy about this
How the Grinch Stole Christmas is officially the most Christmassy movie in the history of cinema, according to a new study.
The 2000 Jim Carrey-starring Dr Seuss adaptation topped the list in new research by OnBuy.com.
The study took 16 classic festive films, and analysed them to find how much Christmas content and iconography they actually contained. They ranked them on a points-based system, based how many key elements were actually on-screen, including Christmas songs, snow, and how many times the word ‘Christmas’ was uttered.
How The Grinch Stole Christmas came out on top, with a score of 584. The only category the film failed to score in was lacking an appearance from Santa Claus.
And that is not the character’s only appearance. Dr Seuss’s The Grinch, the 2018 animated version with Benedict Cumberbatch, took second place, with a score of 484.
Love Actually came third, and Nativity! was in fourth place.
Bottom of the list of the films analysed was 1954’s White Christmas. It is a stone-cold Christmas classic and it’s position might come as a surprise if you haven’t seen it recently – but most of the runtime is actually dedicated to Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye renovating a guest house.
How The Grinch Stole Christmas is of course based on Dr Seuss’ eternally popular 1957 children’s story of the same name.
Jim Carrey plays the titular Grinch who tries to steal Christmas from the nearby town of Whoville. It reportedly took Carrey two and a half hours in make-up every day to get into the green fur.
The story has been adapted for the screen several times. Before the Jim Carrey and Benedict Cumberbatch versions, it was memorably adapted into a 1966 animated TV special, with horror legend Boris Karloff providing both the voice of the Grinch and the narration. And this year, NBC will air a live version of the stage musical, with Matthew Morrison in the lead role.
