WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - "No! Ho! Ho!" is the official tagline for the holiday comedy "Christmas with the Kranks," but it serves just as well as a capsule review.

Terminally unfunny and quite mean-spirited, this attempt at a new seasonal classic, which opens today, is so unlikable it will probably disappear from theaters before you even begin your holiday shopping.

Courtroom novelist John Grisham has not always had the best of luck with big-screen adaptations of his stories, but none is as worthy of a defamation lawsuit as this initially snide, then sentimental toe-stubber by director Joe Roth ("America's Sweethearts").

Based on Grisham's "Skipping Christmas," a fairly entertaining read, the movie broadens and coarsens virtually every inch of the book, veering in the direction of television sitcom with the casting of Tim Allen as budget-conscious, humbugging Luther Krank.

When this modern-day suburban Scrooge totals up what he and wifey, Nora (Jamie Lee Curtis), spent on Christmas last year, he realizes that they can afford a relaxing Caribbean cruise if they resolve to ignore Christmas entirely.

Easier said than done, of course. There's the office gift exchange, the standing order for personalized greeting cards, the sad-faced Boy Scouts who sell trees door-to-door, the local police with their solicitation-cum-extortion, the Christmas lights, the large Frosty the Snowman that annually announces the season atop the Kranks' roof and their traditional Christmas Eve cocktail party for the neighbors.

Still, Luther is intent on just saying "no" to it all, an attitude that is met with open hostility from everyone on his street, particularly unelected ward boss Vic Frohmeyer (Dan Aykroyd), who explains to Luther how un-American he is being.

Of course, like Scrooge, Luther has to have a conversion, which comes soon after the movie has flogged the comic potential of a family standing up to the materialistic snowball of Christmas. When the Kranks' daughter, who recently left for South America to serve in the Peace Corps, calls suddenly and announces that she and her new fiance will be flying in unexpectedly in time for the holiday party, Nora caves in instantly. She begins a last-minute desperate, and desperately unfunny, attempt to gather sufficient party foods and supplies.

Truly lame, for instance, is Nora's manic quest for her daughter's favorite canned ham, which leads to a tug of war in the supermarket. But then, it is no less embarrassing than the sequence where Luther and Nora go to a tanning salon for a little pre-cruise skin pigment. Or Luther's Botox injection, which so freezes his face that his dinner dribbles out of his mouth - an update of an old, unfunny Jerry Lewis shtick.

"Home Improvement" fans presumably find Allen amusing, but Luther is so obtuse and sour, it is hard to imagine anyone with enough inherent warmth to carry the role off. Curtis is required to act like a certified ninny, screaming hysterically whenever her daughter calls on the phone, as if she has mistaken "Christmas with the Kranks" for "Halloween 6." But give her sympathy points for continuing her crusade to convince us that she no longer has a perfect body, by wearing an ill-fitting bikini in that tanning scene.

You would think that Chris Columbus had better things to do than write this screenplay, but then how long could it have taken him? Who knows, maybe he has already outlined a sequel, in anticipation of this movie becoming a hit.

As bad as this movie is, which is "very," never doubt the possibility of "Labor Day with the Kranks " if some holiday-minded executive thinks it could make some money.