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Appropriately enough, to explain the plot of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol to someone is tantamount to taking them on a journey of their own past. It is a story woven into the foundation of our modern traditions. It's become synonymous with the holiday (not to mention general human morals) ever since its release, and rightfully so. Now, imagine all you knew about it confoundingly gutted from it and the quivering, steaming remains covered in resplendent clothing to simulate the idea of life. Now you begin to understand what Robert Zemeckis' adaptation of the tale for Disney feels like.
Zemeckis had made much ado about his, at the time, dedication to motion capture technology and its potential applications to liberating the mind and capabilities of the director. With both "The Polar Express" and "Beowulf" he seemed to begin to scratch at the surface of justifying these claims, despite struggling with issues surmounting the uncanny valley. "A Christmas Carol" might have been the piece to bring his point home, with its use of a familiar and beloved story that had imagery ripe to explore. Alas, it might be the piece that soundly put his desire to make motion capture animation the next big thing to rest (the next time he would use it would be in a much more subdued manner in the disastrous failure "Welcome To Marwen").
Of course, Zemeckis has brought us much wonder and awe in his lifetime with classics like the "Back to the Future" trilogy, "Forrest Gump", "Contact", and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". His adventurousness with the art is admirable and he's certainly more than earned his respect but one wonders exactly what he sought to earn by taking all the meaning and character out of such a well known story.
"A Christmas Carol" could have been well regarded (as are several of the previous adaptations) rather than best forgotten if he had balanced his obvious want for something visually lush with something with a semblance of a heart and humanity. In short, his take relies heavily on spectacle rather than story. You are bounced around from scene to scene in tiresomely long, overly effects-laden (even for a movie that is purely made of effects) sequences that could have better been used to spend time getting to know characters and situations.
Indeed, why should we care about the life-changing journey of the curmudgeonly and rapacious Scrooge if we are shown so little context to his life? Worse, what little we do see is so bereft of life and gravitas that you wonder why anyone would make any of the decision Scrooge would make. We get but the briefest of glimpses into his past, present, for future in a breakneck mad scramble of scenes that come and go so quickly that they almost seem confusing, but surely feel horribly unimportant, in the long run. None of these feelings should crop up while watching something so familiar to western culture.
Make no mistake, either. This is not the result of a new vision for the material. Sure, there is a darker air to things here but style over substance is all it amounts to. The source material certainly lends itself to a little creative exploration with its darker elements and Zemeckis plays with these (albeit like a furtive child that played with his food rather than eaten it) but to no substantial avail.
Scrooge has always been at the core of the story but those around him make his journey meaningful. Well, strap on for a soulless ride, boys and girls. You'll only get to know the people around him for the briefest and most insignificant amounts of time. A character piece this is not.
If this movie had one saving grace it's Jim Carrey's dedication to portraying the lead role. You could easily see his take transplanted into a better adaptation and finding a home there just fine. However, you mostly wonder how much more he could have done had the script not limited him so much with its overreliance on being an effects extravaganza.
This film was intended to be shown in 3D and, while we don't get an uncanny amount of objects flying at the screen, we do begin to understand why some scenes play more like a showcase rather than a performance. The sad part is that this movie doesn't even impress on an effects level. The character designs are hideous (Bob Cractchit is a monstrosity) or downright laughable (that copy-pasted face on the Ghost of Christmas Past) and the descent into the uncanny valley turns into a full-throttle plummet.
The ending and the beginning feel like they are a completely different movie. The longer middle, on the other hand, feels overstuffed with superficialities and anemic in validity or meaning. You think you'll care about it as it begins, then you realize you're in a roller coaster of images that numbs you into apathy, and then the end comes and you kind of feel angry that they try to make it seem like something cathartic truly happened here.
"A Christmas Carol" is an abomination. It is godawful as an adaptation, it is godawful as something that tries to be new, it is godawful as a feast for the eyes, and it is lacking in everything that it should not be lacking. I give this film 1/10.
