Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		0.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Just in time for Halloween!

Hard to believe it's taken this long for the animated holiday classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas to reach 4K, given that Ron Howard's awful live-action remake debuted on UHD back in 2017 and Warner Bros. countered with an Ultimate Edition Blu-ray (their words, not mine) of the Chuck Jones original a year later. That was one of the most disappointing double-dips in recent memory, serving up only a modestly improved transfer from the 2009 Blu-ray and the same tired extras we've gotten since the DVD days. Yet here it is: a great-looking upgrade of the original and best adaptation of Dr. Seuss' classic story, polished to a shine and nicely encoded on UHD with lossless audio and a similar A/V upgrade for two included vintage bonus specials, The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat and Halloween is Grinch Night.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2009 Blu-ray review by Ken Brown)

The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat (from the Ultimate Edition Blu-ray review by me)

Halloween is Grinch Night (from the Ultimate Edition Blu-ray review by me)

Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

NOTE: These screenshots have been sourced from the 4K disc and down-converted to 1080p/SDR, which means that they should not be considered a 100% accurate depiction of the picture quality during playback.

Animation lovers rejoice, because Warner Bros.' dazzling new 2160p/HDR10 transfer of How the Grinch Stole Christmas looks much closer to what I'd call an ideal presentation of hand-drawn material than anything we've gotten in the past. It's still bright and crisp with excellent color saturation, favoring a pea-green hue for the Grinch himself rather than the lime tint of decades ago, and features wonderful balance overall thanks to the tasteful application of HDR. Line edges are intact, blacks are nice and deep, motion is fluid and problem-free, and as a whole it simply looks like an authentic presentation that's been treated with care. Most of my enthusiasm comes from the much more prevalent signs of film grain, which had previously been scrubbed away by excessive noise reduction but is clearly more visible here. It's very close in overall appearance to what we might expect from WB's boutique label Warner Archive... and that goes for the bit rate as well, which typically hovers in the 80Mbps range and is roughly three to four times what we got from the last Blu-ray release (and delivered via a more efficient codec to boot!). In all honesty, I almost couldn't be happier with how this classic short looks in UHD, and I'm sincerely hoping that long-time fans will feel the same way.

It's also worth noting that both The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat and Halloween is Grinch Night have received similar treatment; like the true main feature, they looked fairly decent on Blu-ray before but were likewise scrubbed fairly harshly with noise reduction. They're still much more muted and unpolished by design, but both of these lesser-known specials nonetheless now look equally authentic and sport the same strong film grain structure as well.

Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Another issue I had with the Ultimate Edition Blu-ray was its stubborn use of lossy Dolby Digital audio, so the debut of a true lossless DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio mix is another check in the win column. Boris Karloff's appropriately thin and haunting narration doesn't sound tremendously improved here, although music cues do indeed feel a bit more robust to my ears and overall it's obviously as authentic to the source material as possible. A French Dolby Digital track is also included, as are subtitles in both languages for all three shorts (including The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat and Halloween is Grinch Night, which have similarly been given a bump to lossless audio) as well as the extras.

Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This one-disc release ships in a keepcase with festive cover artwork and a matching slipcover, but no inserts or Digital Copy... or remastered Blu-ray copy, for that matter. The bonus features are identical in content to previous Blu-ray editions (minus a few negligible text-based bios) and were already covered in Ken Brown's 2009 review.

• Audio Commentary with June Foray and Phil Roman

• Dr. Seuss and the Grinch: From Whoville to Hollywood

• Songs in the Key of Grinch

• Song Selections

• "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" Special Edition

• Grinch Pencil Test

Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Chuck Jones' immortal 1966 animated adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas absolutely deserved a definitive 4K home video release after two moderately disappointing Blu-rays, and this one's probably as close as we'll ever get. Simply put, Warner Bros.' UHD edition checks all the boxes for a top-quality A/V presentation (which also applies to both bonus specials, The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat and Halloween is Grinch Night), only coming up short in the bonus features department. It's still a solid release, all things considered, so anyone equipped for 4K should absolutely buy themselves an early Christmas present with this one. Firmly Recommended.