Film Review – The Mean One

Copyright laws are a funny thing, and they’re about to get funnier in a hurry. Beloved characters from books and movies are being repurposed for horror entertainment, and as the world waits for whatever “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” has to offer, there’s “The Mean One” to tide them over. It’s a take on Dr. Suess’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” but instead of pulling ideas from the beloved book, screenwriters Finn and Flip Kobler take most of their inspiration from Ron Howard’s 2000 screen adaptation, which starred Jim Carrey as the Grinch. “The Mean One” can’t afford to hire Carrey and it can’t deal with lawsuits, playing a careful game of mimicry with its tale of a monster in a mountain who hates everything about Christmas. However, instead of planning a heist, this green ghoul is ready to kill. “The Mean One” is a low-budget offering from director Steven LaMorte, who doesn’t have a lot to work with here beyond initial outrageousness. It’s a seasonal slaughterama, but also painfully restricted by monetary limitations, feeling like a cheap quickie when it had the potential to be supremely weird. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com