Salt Lake Tribune Review
Charles Dickens' 19th-century tale of Ebenezer Scrooge's ghostly Christmas visitations is given the umpteenth Hollywood treatment, this time with a technological sheen as state-of-the-art as its lessons of greed and charity are classic.
But while the look of Disney's computer-animated 3-D version of "A Christmas Carol" works as digital eye candy with advanced motion capture for human movement, this new interpretation mostly fails at re-creating the story's human emotions.
At the least, however, it provides a tour-de-force showcase for actor
Jim Carrey, who uses Dickens' timeless characters as a canvas for his wildly expressive face -- he plays not only Scrooge, but the ghosts as well.
The story is familiar, thanks to the 1951 black-and-white Alastair Sim version, the standard all movie translations are compared to.
Overnight, the miserly Scrooge is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. Scrooge witnesses his childhood, broken marriage, his treatment of employee Bob Cratchit (
Gary Oldman) and the future. Scrooge then learns if he doesn't change his current ways, he will die alone after an empty existence of greed and uncaring.
Unlike past adaptations that have taken Dickens' core lesson and turned it on its head with Muppets, Mr. Magoo, Mickey Mouse or
Bill Murray ("Scrooged"), this new version goes back to the original source material.
But it's also a darker, scarier and more unnecessarily kinetic screen version that's liable to frighten and confuse younger children.
It's directed by
Robert Zemeckis, who has been more successful with living people ("Back to the Future," "Forrest Gump") than computer-generated characters ("Polar Express," "Beowulf"). He turns to digital technology for the third time in a row, this time to depict 19th-century England. By making animated film, he can swoop through the midnight London skies and track through crowds effortlessly at only a fraction of the cost of live shots.
But focusing on all that technological wizardry comes at a cost of telling the story with deeper emotions or capturing Scrooge's life-changing arc with more meaning.
There are visually dazzling set pieces -- especially in 3-D, which works fairly well -- but with all of the money and effort spent on wowing audiences with technology that produces detailed facial expressions, it's a shame those digital ones and zeroes weren't employed to move audiences with this classic tale.
-- Vince Horiuchi
The rundown: State-of-the-art motion-capture technology may produce dazzling computer animation, but it doesn't make for a more moving adaptation of the Dickens classic. 96 minutes. (VH)
Synopsis: Ebenezer Scrooge begins the Christmas holiday with his usual miserly contempt, barking at his faithful clerk and his cheery nephew. But when the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come take him on an eye-opening journey revealing truths Old Scrooge is reluctant to face, he must open his heart to undo years of ill will before it's too late.
We all know the story. I went with some trepidation that with Jim Carrey it would run amuck like he did with the Grinch. But I was wrong. This was a deliteful adaption of Dickens tale. The dialogue was held to the story quite well. The 3D animation was fun and, I thought, added to the story and the fun experience. I think this is a great movie to take the family to. [ Report Abuse ]