How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Revealing mistake: After the Grinch burns down the Christmas tree in the middle of town and right before they bring out the new one, the Grinch is about to make his escape in the Dump it to Crumpit. The Grinch makes a wide eyed face and you can see he isn't wearing his green and yellow contacts. (00:59:15)

How the Grinch Stole Christmas mistake picture

Visible crew/equipment: When the Grinch is building the sled as he is putting the tin sheets on it there is an overview shot where you can see the shadow of the camera. (01:01:01)

Continuity mistake: After the Grinch unscrews the light bulb in the town Christmas tree, all the lights in the town go dark and the Grinch starts to take off in his sled-thing. When they show a close up of him, the lights are on. Then a few seconds later, the lights are off again.

Continuity mistake: After the Grinch stole all of the presents, Officer Wholihan gets into his police car and drags the mayor's bed out of his house. When the bed smashes through the window it breaks the top off the middle post of the bed. Then when it comes back to the shot of the bed it's been fixed.

Revealing mistake: When the mayor has his head shaved by the Grinch, Clint Howard grabs the clippers and shaves his own head down the middle. His hair is yanked off his head before he even moves his hand. Even better in slow motion.

Continuity mistake: When the Grinch is messing up the mail in the back room, he takes out a package and puts it in another one. When he takes his hand out the package falls out and lands next to the pile of presents. The mistake is when the camera goes to another shot, the package is not lying on the ground as it was before.

Continuity mistake: When Miss Martha May is shooting the lights onto her house you see them lit as they are being fed into and coming out of the machine when the camera is pointing on her but when it's a far off shoot only the lights coming out are lit not the ones on the feeding wheel.

Continuity mistake: When the Grinch burns the Christmas tree, in an overhead shot he isn't anywhere in sight, then in the following closeup he's back beside the ashes of the tree.

Hamster

Revealing mistake: When the Grinch is powering up his sled, he's turning on switches. The circular display is dark, then turns on during the process. If you look closely, you see the grid and the big black arrow on it before it is lit up.

Movie Nut

Continuity mistake: When Betty Lou watches Martha May shoot the lights from her machine, she is holding a string of lit Christmas lights. Then in the first shot when she leans over the roof, holding the Christmas lights, the strings of lights is off and are then lit in the following shots.

Hamster

Revealing mistake: When the Grinch is accepting the Holiday Cheermeister award, Jim Carrey holds up his hand and his palm is facing the camera and you can see the piece of his suit has been slipped over his thumb to make it green and furry.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas mistake picture

Continuity mistake: In the post office scene, when Cindy is talking to her dad, you can see a post box marked "Grinch" and it has nothing in it. Later we are shown a close-up of the Grinch mailbox and it has spider webs in it.

Visible crew/equipment: When the two boys are in front of the Grinch's front door, a big monster comes out of the front door, scaring them. The boys then jump off the side of the rocks, and a cable attached to them is perfectly visible.

Hamster

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: I've watched this scene over and over, and there is no cable visible as they jump.

zenee

Revealing mistake: During several of the scenes on the mountain you can tell that the rocks are made of some sort of soft material because you can see them crumple when the Grinch gets near them.

Continuity mistake: When the two women who adopted the Grinch show him a plate of cookies on a santa plate when he was younger, one cookie with red icing on it falls off the plate. In the next shot it's back on again.

Hamster

Continuity mistake: When Max bites the Grinch in the mail room, and the Grinch starts spinning around, a pile of presents appears under the wall of mail slots between shots.

Hamster

Continuity mistake: When the little girl first sees the Grinch the orange light is spinning around and you can hear a siren. Then when the Grinch speaks it conveniently turns off and back on again when he finishes.

The Grinch: Those Whos are hard to frazzle, Max. But, we did our worst, and that's all that matters.

More quotes from How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Trivia: Jim Carrey's makeup took 2 hours to put on and 1 hour to take off, every day for 92 days of filming.

More trivia for How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Question: In the beginning, there is a watchman that announces "Another minute closer to Christmas!" as each minute ticks off a countdown clock. Assuming that each panel (days, hours minutes) is on a revolving wheel of some sort, how can the three wheels work correctly in such close proximity to each other? Granted, only the minutes part moves for the sake of the story, but it still begs the question.

Movie Nut

Answer: By machine.

The clock in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" is designed for cinematic effect; a real-world counterpart would rely on precise gearing and engineering to allow three separate wheels to operate in close proximity without interfering with each other. The key would be in the gear ratios and the alignment of the gears to ensure smooth operation of each panel.

More questions & answers from How the Grinch Stole Christmas

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