A Christmas Carol
Movie Review
"A Christmas Carol"
Review by Eric D. Snider
Grade: C
Rating: PG
Released: Friday, November 6, 2009
Directed by:
Cast:
The fear many of us had when it was announced Jim Carrey would play Ebenezer Scrooge and other parts in Robert Zemeckis' adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" was that Carrey's clowning would turn the story into a goofy farce. This fear turns out to have been unfounded. If anything, the opposite is true: The film has no personality at all, not Carrey's or anyone else's.
Charles Dickens' holiday classic has already been adapted for movies and TV dozens of times, but Zemeckis noticed something peculiar: Somehow, none of the previous incarnations had managed to be in 3-D! He sought to rectify this oversight with that newfangled motion-capture technology he's been so excited about the last several years, where actors' movements are translated into animation. "The Polar Express" and "Beowulf" demonstrated that for as neat-o as the technology is for action scenes, characters' faces -- especially their eyes -- look dead and soulless. Some improvement has been made in that respect, but most of the people in "A Christmas Carol" still look like creepy robots.
[To read the rest of the review, please visit Cinematical.]
Grade: C
Rated PG, some scariness
1 hr., 36 min.
Copyright © Eric D. Snider.
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This item has 5 comments
November 6, 2009 at 9:37 pm
I think you gave a pretty accurate review of the film. For everything Zemeckis did right, there are some things that are just wrong. For instance, (mild SPOILER) I LOVED that the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come was portrayed mostly in shadow (including 3-D shadow)--but shrinking Scrooge? Why??!!?
BTW, Scrooge DOES mention that the goose is for the Cratchit's, but that line is rather rushed in Carrey's delivery.
And it was DEFINITELY too creepy for kids. My kids do fine with the Harry Potter films, but this movie likes to give us the sudden surprise scares--in 3-D!
November 7, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Cary elwes and robin Penn Wright together in the same movie again! I'm guessing they don't share a scene.
November 18, 2009 at 11:57 am
I really like the story "A Christmas Carol", but this adaptation was terrible. I made the mistake of taking my six-year-old. She had nightmares for the next several nights.
Not only did they make the film soulless, as Eric describes, but they seem to make it intentionally frightening. There are probably three scenes where they make a joke, but it's so tone-deaf that you wonder whether they meant to be funny. The whole film is just very ... disconcerting. They can't seem to figure out what kind of atmosphere they want for it (for example, playing Christmas carols during frightening scenes). I don't know who their intended audience was. It wasn't kids. It wasn't Dickens fans. You don't leave the film feeling uplifted or happy or even Christmas-y. It just feels creepy.
December 6, 2009 at 11:39 am
My absolute favorite version of A Christmas Carol (favorite Christmas movie too!)is the Muppet version starring Michael Caine. Jim Henson's characters made of felt and plastic succeeded in conveying more emotion than all the modern CGI technology that money can buy.
If you want your kids to enjoy Dicken's A Christmas Carol, go rent A Muppet Christmas Carol, and skip this new version. Awful.
December 7, 2009 at 11:45 am
Goldfish,
You are crazy. The definitive version of a Christmas Carol is the one with George C. Scott as Scrooge. It just is not Christmas season without watching Patton run around a Dickensian London. Wonderful stuff.
Lohengrin