Ron Howard brings to the screen a lively but languid and ultimately empty revision of Dr. Seuss’ magical tale of a green haired grouch with an ill temper for yule tidings. There’s plenty of noise and effects but none of the magic can be sustained.

The most difficult problem with making a feature film out of Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas is that it’s 20 minutes of source material. This then requires a lot of padding, and boy does Howard pad like none other. With the aid of the screenwriters of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (who I’ve now lost all respect for) they go into a psychoanalysis of why the Grinch acts how he does. As it seems with every serial killer movie the Grinch was tormented as a child for being a little green, hairy brussel sprout. What child wouldn’t make fun of a kid that was green? This distaste for the holidays turns the Grinch into a hermit who enjoys his days making prank phone calls down to the city of Who-ville and wallowing in despair. Cindy Lou-Who sees a nice but misunderstood person underneath all that fur and thus embarks on a quest to show the citizens of Who-ville that the Grinch isn’t so bad. Mixed results ensue.

Howard’s direction is very child-like but empty after an initial glow. One wonders what Tim Burton could have concocted with the same material. The art direction looks like a candy-coated Oz instead of the whimsical imagination of Dr. Seuss. The central message of The Grinch is that Christmas doesn’t come from a box or a store but the message is entirely hypocritical when you have a bazillion product deals for the film. The whole “lost view of Christmas” is a very lame moral anyway.

Jim Carrey, on the other hand, puts this movie on his green back and nearly saves it himself. But the immense weight overtakes him in the end. Carrey gives a flat-out slapstick comedic performance like none other. If you had any doubt in Carrey’s ability to contort himself for laughter all doubts will be quelled. While Carrey is marvelous as the central villain/hero (?) the majority of time is spent with the dog-nosed Whos. These people are lifeless and uninteresting. It’s a breath of relief every time we return back to Carrey. The Who’s are populated with a Martha Stewart like former crush of the Grinch’s (Christine Baranski), the mother who strives to be like Martha May-Who and has no other characterization (Molly Shannon), and the dowdy mayor of Who-ville (Jeffrey Tambor). No one can survive unclean.

Without Carrey this family film would be without merit. The writing throws a few bones toward the adult audience but relies too much on Carrey being goofy – which he is good at. Anthony Hopkins as a grandfatherly narrator works only in making you miss Boris Karloff even more. In short, watch the Chuck Jones special instead. This Christmas gift is a lump of coal disguised as candy.

Nate’s Grade: C