It's hard to discern exactly whom this holiday tripe is for. The children sitting behind me squirmed and kicked my seat repeatedly, their persistent tattoo hitting the beat on boring old 1-and-3, just like the movie. Maybe the movie is for grown-ups, but it's hard to tell. Curtis, a wonderful comic actress as well as an extraordinarily attractive one, is given an unflattering mom haircut and spends most of the movie in white turtlenecks printed with ditsy holiday motifs and garishly embroidered holiday sweaters; she sits up in bed reading "Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul."

It's impossible to tell if Roth (the director of "America's Sweethearts," as well as a founder of Revolution Studios, and formerly the chairman of Disney and Fox) is pandering to perceived middle-American tastes or exaggerating them as a way of poking gentle fun at them. (The movie's faux heartwarmer of an ending suggests the former.)

In any event, Curtis -- who in "Freaky Friday" gave one of last year's finest performances -- is wasted here. And what are Roth and director of photography Don Burgess thinking in shooting her body as they do, exaggerating every middle-aged contour? Two years ago Curtis posed in a sports bra and briefs for "More" magazine, as a way of showing how the movies, and the media in general, can take regular bodies and make them look close to perfect. In "Christmas With the Kranks," Curtis probably didn't think twice about appearing in a bikini (and the schlumpy way she carries herself through the movie is part of her performance). But there's still something cheap and unsettling about the way the normalcy of her body is exaggerated for laughs.

Tim Allen is adequate here, but then, the movie asks so little of him. (It's a shame that Allen is rarely challenged to deliver a performance as prickly, and as interesting, as the one he gave in the wonderful "Galaxy Quest.") And toward the end of the picture, the wonderful stage actor Austin Pendleton (best known in movies for his character work) shows up, as a neighborhood eccentric whom nobody in the neighborhood recognizes. He's about the only person in this movie who seems like a real human being.

The title "Christmas With the Kranks" suggests that the movie is straining to be pretender to the "Bad Santa" throne. But "Bad Santa" had a steadily beating misanthropic heart; "Christmas With the Kranks" professes to be all heart, but it has none at all. It says nothing about the true meaning of Christmas, which, I believe, has zip to do with Christianity in the first place. At the very least, it fails to recognize the simplicity and beauty of what I, as a person of Christian-type origin, affectionately and with a great deal of envy call Jewish Christmas: Chinese food and a movie on Christmas day. Hark! The herald angels sing! Listen closely and you might hear their message, which all creatures of the earth would do well to heed: Please pass the moo shu beef.

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