REVIEW: ‘Disney’s A Christmas Carol’

Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” 101 years ago. The message was simple: if you don’t keep the spirit of Christmas in your heart, you’ll wind up soulless, despised and alone. It’s been adapted for movies and television no less than 25 times. This year, Robert Zemeckis puts his spin on the classic with a new computer-generated Scrooge, with better results than I had expected.

“Disney’s A Christmas Carol” Rated PG • 96 minutes Starring The Voices Of: Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Robin Wright Penn Written and Directed by: Robert Zemeckis RCC Rating: Worth Seeing At A Matinee

Jim Carrey provides the voice for Ebenezer Scrooge, as well as the ghosts he encounters on Christmas Eve. At first glance, Carrey might have seemed an odd choice for the task, but it allows Zemeckis to use Carrey’s still-formidable vocal acrobatics to bring the various characters to life. The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet-To-Come are also modeled after Carrey, an interesting choice by Zemeckis to personify the various bits of Scrooge’s wrestling with the meaning of the season.

While Carrey’s name is above the title on the poster, the CG animation is the real star of the movie – and depending on your view of the Robert Zemeckis style of motion capture work, that may or may not be a good thing. I found the technique downright creepy in “The Polar Express,” and off-putting in “Beowulf,” but the strides made to create the “Carol” characters shows real improvement in life-like rendering of “artificial people.” There are still missteps, such as the over-laughing Ghost Of Christmas Present, but the facial work on Scrooge and Bob Cratchit are as life-like as I’ve seen in the genre.

“A Christmas Carol” is being heavily marketed towards children, and I have to wonder if that’s a mistake. The moral of “Carol” is to keep the spirit of Christmas in your heart, and the kind of loss that drives Scrooge to shun human contact and warmth just doesn’t register with children – they just know he’s a mean old man. Also, while there’s some additional dialogue tossed in as filler, the majority of the script is directly from Dickens’ novel, and the Cockney accents might be a little tough for children to understand.

Above all, the spooky Ghost of Christmas Future, and some of the portions of Ghost Present might be a little strong for younger viewers. Obviously, parents will be able to judge whether their kids are ready for the movie, but I would hesitate bringing anyone younger than seven years old to see the film.

There’s a few bits of annoying padding in the film where the story gives way to CG showmanship, such as a miniaturized Scrooge is chased through the streets of London by a spectre horse and carriage. These 3D sequences certainly pop, but they’re almost entirely unnecessary and a bit distracting.

Quibbles aside, Zemeckis creates a version of “A Christmas Carol” that preserves Dickens’ message and delivers it in a new and entertaining fashion.