DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS

Mike Miliardf

It's a safe bet that the motivation behind making this $100 million extravaganza was not the altruistic wish to show kiddies that "Christmas doesn't come from a store" but just the opposite: to unload all the Grinch merchandise pudgy little hands can grab. Yet though Ron Howard's adaptation is as treacly as you'd expect, it's not as cynically sentimental as you might fear. The liberties the film takes with the sacrosanct 1957 text and the songs from the perennial TV favorite will offend only the most orthodox of Geisel devotees. And Jim Carey -- dolled up in a costume so excruciating that he needed to learn pain-deferment techniques to bear it -- delivers: the twitches of his synthetic eyebrows speak volumes, and his voice is a peculiar blend of Shakespearean thespian and Bond-era Connery. First-timer Taylor Momsen's Cindy Lou Who is cute but not cloying. And Who-ville is magnificent: a rococo, snow-blanketed wonderland, a vivid study in red and green. Throw in some grown-up jokes (a Ron Howard impersonation, a sly hint at extramarital sex, a gay-hairdresser bit) and you've got a holiday movie that, if hardly The Nightmare Before Christmas, at least isn't as bad as Santa Claus: The Movie.