A Christmas Carol

We hardly need to tell you that this film marks Disney’s third stab at Dickens festive morality tale since 1983. Or that the plot concerns three ghostly visitations to miserly malcontent Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey) who, in turn, learns to stop worrying and love fattened geese and carol singing.  With equal predictability, Robert Zemeckis’ new version is a hollow, superfluous addition to the Xmas movie canon. Produced through performance capture, a process Zemeckis has previously used in his films The Polar Express (2004) and Beowulf (2007), A Christmas Carol begs the question: why bother?  Too rooted in reality to pass as a cartoon and too cartoonish to be realistic, the film’s unnatural, dead-eyed characters leave little room for identification or sympathy. Jim Carrey gives it socks, but even his grandiloquence can’t bring his semi-animated alter ego to life. Creepy, but not in a good way.