Here are some film facts about Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas. 8,000 makeup appliances were used on the film, applied by 45 makeup artists on busy days. There was enough "snow" to cover nine football fields. There were 1,938 candy canes used for decoration. And, it took 2 million linear feet of Styrofoam to build the sets. This laundry list of spectacle gives you a clue as to what the filmmakers cared about when they made The Grinch. One gets the sense that more time was spent designing the world of Dr. Seuss than filling it with the sentiments for which he is so beloved.

Indeed, what made and still makes the author so popular among children and adults alike are the facts that he is clever and he is succinct, two elements sadly lacking in this film. (For you fact buffs, it's notable that "The Cat in the Hat" was spawned by a request for an imaginative reading primer using only 220 words.) Here, instead of wit, writers Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman go overboard on the hip-ness quotient, having Grinchy quip one-liners like "Kids today. So desensitized to violence." Very un-Seuss, fellas.

And, instead of brevity, the story is stretched out over an intolerable two-hour period, using the original story merely as the bracket for the newly created plot line. The latter focuses on dear little Cindy Lou Who (an adorable Taylor Momsen), who doesn't understand the meaning of Christmas. All around her, the Whos of Whoville engage in rampant consumerism at Christmas, but is this what it's all about, she wonders? So do we, quite frankly. When did the Whos become as shallow and simplistic as us humans? Were they always such shopping devotees, such decorating addicts? Not in Seuss's universe.

On one level, making Cindy Lou a bit of a grinch herself (she has no holiday spirit) makes her the perfect match for the Grinch; they eventually discover the joy of the season together. But this theme is lost for most of the film with an unnecessary flashback into why the Grinch became the monster he is today -- it was unrequited love that did it, of course -- as well as the "Whobilation" celebration, which is simply an excuse for big costumes and bad music. Roughly translated, it's all filler, filler, filler. Through all of this rigmarole, there is some attempt to capture the flavor of the original material by integrating Seuss's rhymes as narration (courtesy of Anthony Hopkins), but it isn't enough to imbue the movie with the charm and the soul it so desperately needs.

As for Jim Carrey, he is indeed the quintessential Grinch, his elastic face and mannerisms capturing the Scrooge-like beast of Whoville. It's almost impossible to think of anyone else in this role. Still, he has an uphill battle with the character. He looks like the Grinch and he sounds like the Grinch, but he most certainly isn't the Grinch that Seuss created. An onion-eating and glass-munching monster who lives in a garbage-cluttered cavern, he is more Oscar the Grouch than elf-gone-wrong Grinch. He is far too freakish and manic for little kids and too distant from the original idea to touch the hearts of the grown kids who recall this curmudgeon with a heart three sizes too small.

Those of us who were weaned on "The Grinch" and other Seussisms as children will surely find a lot lacking in this film version. After all, the cartoon adaptation we all watched as kids was so satisfying that many people, including Seuss himself, didn't see a reason to improve on it. So, is this the Grinch we know and love? And is it a Grinch that today's kids will grab onto as well? Sadly, no, on both counts. Dr. Seuss always saw fantasy as "a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope." In the vision of director Ron Howard, he's taken this concept too far. He's created Seuss on steroids, beefed up with over-the-top set design, frenetic cinematography, freakish makeup effects (the Whos all look like little pigs) and a script that tries desperately to be modern when sweet and simple would have sufficed. " It's no wonder that, rumor has it, Seuss's widow has pulled the rights to her husband's Cat in the Hat from Hollywood.