How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000 film) the actor sneaks up on Carrey the wild-man dervish. In whichever mode, he carreys the movie." Peter Stack of the "San Francisco Chronicle" said, "Nobody could play the Grinch better than Jim Carrey, whose rubbery antics and maniacal sense of mischief are so well suited to "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". Dr. Seuss himself might have turned to Carrey as a model for the classic curmudgeon had the actor been around in 1957." However, he wondered why Carrey "made himself sound like Sean Connery" and warned that the character's intensity may frighten small children. James Berardinelli of ReelViews wrote that
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (TV special) songs and animated sequences without words (the longest being an extended scene in which the Grinch and Max comically descend into Whoville) were added. As all the major networks had flipped to full color schedules by 1966, the special was likewise produced in color, establishing the Grinch's color (white in the two-tone illustrations of the original book) as green, a convention used in later television specials featuring the character as well as the 2000 and 2018 film adaptations. The half-hour (with commercials) short was originally telecast in the United States on CBS on December 18, 1966. CBS repeated it annually