A Christmas Carol

Directed by: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, and Bob Hoskins
Showing nightly at the Loma at 7:00, for the week of December 11th

Robert Zemeckis provides us with his take on Dickens' classic novel. Zemeckis employs a technique he used in both Beowulf and The Polar Express: using real actors, acting out real scenes, then completely laying over computer graphics for the movie's scenes (modeling both actors and settings.) The result is very mediocre. Even though A Christmas Carol stands alongside such Christmas movie staples as It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, or White Christmas, this particular iteration of the film is devoid of any holiday feeling to me. This is genuinely hard to do, seeing as the weather in the film certainly looks cold, there are copious Christmas carols sung, and a lot of Christmas references are made, but I felt no holiday cheer after the end of this movie. This wasn't a terrible movie, but it doesn't add anything to the story that hasn't already been done better in previous efforts.

Zemeckis is a prolific director (as well as writer and producer), with more then his fair share of standout films (including Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, and the Back to the Future trilogy), but this film in my mind is not Zemeckis at his best. As far as Dickens' novel translated visually (into film or television,) there are 2 benchmarks: Edwin L. Marin's version (made in 1938), and Clive Donner's (made for television in 1984, starring the incomparable George C. Scott, as Scrooge). This version does not nearly match either of these benchmarks. This is where the movie fails for me. The key to any version of A Christmas Carol is encapsulating Scrooge's catharsis from grumpy recluse to a charitable pleasant man, with the backdrop of dark, poor industrial England. The film covers this ground and certainly stays largely honest to Dickens' story, but for whatever reason (perhaps it was the overly intense scenes which peppered the whole film, or the stomach churning flying that seemed mandatory through too many transitions in the story) it loses the spirit of the story, and the Christmas feeling felt in previous versions. With that said, there are some standout performances in the film: Oldman does an excellent job as Bob Cratchit (he also voices Marley and Tiny Tim), as does Bob Hoskins in a brief turn playing Mr. Fezziwig. Jim Carrey is predictable by going over the top in his multiple parts (particularly as Scrooge, and the always laughing Ghost of Christmas Present,) effectively drawing the attention not to the story, but to his acting (a common problem I have with Carrey's acting.)

It's worth it to comment briefly on the computer graphics approach used in this film. Last seen in Beowulf two years years ago (pioneered in The Polar Express five years ago,) time has really improved this technique of filming actors, then applying computer models to both the actor and scene. In The Polar Express, the models looked vacant and creepy, with a real lack of subtle facial motions needed to sell characters as real people. Beowulf improved on this incrementally, but wasn't quite there. Though the models used in A Christmas Carol can be inconsistent at times, the best ones are the primary characters (Scrooge, Cratchit, and Fezziwig), which is the right choice, making it easy to overlook the subpar models used for other characters. Zemeckis worked very hard to give them emotional substance, and the world palpable mass, and it shows. It's good to see such an improvement, but unfortunate that the movie built around this filming technique doesn't complement it.

The bottom line is that even though this film doesn't live up to the source story's potential, it is still only OK. It really shouldn't be watched by younger children, as some of the scenes are very intense (there are multiple jump in your seat scenes that give a more Halloween then Christmas feel at times), and don't expect to get that old A Christmas Carol feeling you might have gotten from the book, or from previous films. This movie does have marginal date potential: some of the scarier scenes provide a good excuse to hold your date close, and the movie is not so bad he or she will be upset at the choice.