The actor Ron Howard called a genius-level talent: “I wasn’t disappointed”
Throughout his career, Ron Howard has demonstrated a knack for bringing out the best in his actors. Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton gave some of the most heartfelt performances of their careers in Apollo 13. Russell Crowe was nominated for an Oscar for his role in A Beautiful Mind, and Jennifer Connolly won ‘Best Supporting Actress’ for her role in the film.
Part of his success in this regard is down to the types of movies he makes. Howard errs on the side of unabashed sentimentality, and while that might be a bit saccharine for some viewers, there is no denying that the director does it well, eschewing the usual romantic tearjerker material for more varied stories about complicated families, harrowing disasters, and misfits overcoming impossible odds.
In these types of movies, actors are required to bring every bit of emotion to their roles, demonstrating courage, tenderness, and vulnerability in a way that thrillers and action movies usually don’t. Hanks is famously good in this register, while Crowe defied expectations by offering a complex range of emotions in A Beautiful Mind.
Sometimes, however, Howard does deviate from his usual subject matter, and as far as he’s concerned, one of those times yielded one of the most impressive performances he’s ever witnessed.
Speaking to CBS News in 2013, the director talked about the times in his career when he’s made movies purely because of their commercial potential rather than their creative appeal, and said that in the instance of the 2000 movie How the Grinch Stole Christmas, he was pleasantly surprised with the results, largely because of the actor at its centre. “I really did want to direct Jim Carrey creating that kind of physical comedy,” he said. “And I wasn’t disappointed, he’s a genius.”
It is difficult to imagine anyone else embodying the role. Even though Carrey is unrecognisable under all the makeup, prosthetics, and neon green fur, his physical comedy is unmistakable. Remaking the 1966 animated classic narrated by Boris Karloff was always going to be a tough sell. It was almost as unthinkable as remaking It’s a Wonderful Life. But no one can accuse Carrey of not giving it his all.
In the feature-length, live-action version of the story, the Grinch gets an extensive backstory, and the citizens of Whoville become a much more prominent part of the plot. But all of this is completely railroaded into submission by Carrey’s performance, in which he appears to vibe to his own instincts at the expense of every single other aspect of the production. If Howard’s first response when seeing the actor’s work on the film was, “This is genius,” it’s easy to imagine how the performance got so out of hand. Unregulated by a director, Carrey is at 100% capacity, which is approximately 95% more than palatable.
Still, the film was a box office success, becoming the sixth highest-grossing movie of the year. It’s also impossible to deny that it is much more endearing and coherent than Mike Myers’ foray into the land of Dr Seuss in 2003’s The Cat in the Hat.
