I spent a good portion of my formative years sitting in front of the television and memorizing every line of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." For me, that cartoon was the definitive holiday moment. Christmas wasn't punctuated by turkey or presents or those awkward moments when you realize that yes, you are indeed the black sheep of the family.

Rather, Christmas for me was heralded by rhyme and a green, evil, fuzzy creature. Okay, maybe not. The point is that I really liked the cartoon. So when the opportunity came for me to see the movie, I jumped at it. When I left the theater, however, I felt that I should not have bothered jumping so high.

While this ambitious update of the Christmas classic has many redeeming moments, it is flawed in ways that I cannot justify overlooking.

My biggest complaint is that Ron Howard's "Grinch" isn't true enough to the original. The intrinsic grumpiness of the Grinch is replaced by the telltale psychoanalytic tendencies of modernity: he is portrayed no longer as a mysteriously malicious What, but rather as the victim of a misunderstood and misspent youth.

Furthermore, the Grinch's sudden acquisition of Holiday spirit is replaced by a bastardized moment of heroism wherein Jim Carrey's obnoxious-cum-loveable character defeats the fat, gluttonous mayor (Jeffrey Tambor) of Whoville and gets the girl, a ludicrous addition played by Christine Baranski.

Also a bit hard to swallow is the prominence of the suddenly sage Cindy Lou Who (Taylor Momsen), whose endearing grin and oddly phallic hairstyle is only upstaged by her tendency to beat mindless consumerism over its greedy head with cute little schemes and an oh-so-touching musical number.

In the original "Grinch," Cindy Lou Who's angelic presence served as a mild catalyst for the Grinch's poetic awakening, but Howard's update has Cindy Lou scheming and plotting in a way that's just a tad too unbelievable for my taste. Nice hair, though.

As I mentioned before, there are some redeemable moments in the movie. The costumes are definitely interesting, as are the props. Carrey isn't too over-the-top, and he does deliver some hilarious scenes, including my favorite moment of the film, in which he declares, "I'm gonna throw up, I'm gonna throw up, I'm gonna throw up, and then I'm gonna die!"

Also a plus is the ultimate irony of watching a theater full of rabid consumers laugh at Dr. Seuss' quiet battle against the deplorable condition of seasonal avarice.

Overall, though, Howard's effort rests too much on the fact that people will be willing to sit through this simply because it is what it is: the Grinch.

Even though Howard takes the intelligent anti-consumerism humor from the original and kills the subtlety, even though Boris Karloff's delightfully creepy narration has been replaced by irritating pop singers and a strangely cheery Anthony Hopkins, even though Molly Shannon somehow managed to crawl out from the abyss of "Saturday Night Live" and made me wince repeatedly at her unfailingly grating voice, I still managed to leave the theater with some sense of satisfaction. As I said, it's the Grinch.