So, imagine our surprise when the supposedly more prestigious holiday picture — "Christmas with the Kranks" with Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis — turns out to be just as bad as its foreshadowing predecessor. Neither film is worth a spark from a Yule log in Tiny Tim's fireplace.

"Christmas with the Kranks" is adapted from Grisham's popular little novel about a middle-aged couple that is about to experience their first empty-nest Christmas. Their daughter has recently left for Peace Corps duties in Peru.

Luther Krank (Allen) gets a bright idea: Let's take all that money we typically spend on the holidays and use it for a romantic, husband-and-wife cruise through the Caribbean. After a bit of reluctance, Nora Krank (Curtis) agrees. They invest in tropical shirts and snorkeling gear, hit the mall tanning salon and prepare for sand and sun.

But then the neighbors start laying on the guilt. The Kranks live on a street that obsesses way over the top about Christmas. They insist that every family put a giant snowman on the roof and cover the house from basement to attic with lights and other decorations. When the Kranks' house remains dark, the obnoxious neighbors literally start to picket and demonstrate. And when Nora goes shopping, a guy at a stationary store actually follows her onto the street and into a restaurant to chastise her for not ordering Christmas cards this year.

The plot finally turns from guilt to panic when the Kranks' daughter calls to announce she's secured a last-minute flight home for the holidays — and is eager for all the Krank family traditions. The news shifts Luther and Nora into frantic overdrive, trying to do in eight hours what usually takes two or three weeks.

The modest, whimsical humor on the pages of Grisham's book translates as hyped-up silliness on the screen, mostly because Chris Columbus' script lacks subtlety and Joe Roth's direction is so flat.

The slapstick laughs seem forced, so is the sentiment, even when a strange man at the Kranks' annual Christmas Eve party turns out to be St. Nick or when Luther makes a generous gift to a troubled old couple on the street. But both incidents generate nothing but crocodile tears. The filmmakers probably avoided the original Grisham title because it might suggest the wrong idea to viewers: To skip "Skipping Christmas." Did we say wrong idea?