Christmas Carol Sings Familiar Tune

When I heard Jim Carrey was starring in a new version of a Christmas Carol, I feared the worst. His take on "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" was pretty unendurable from its very first frame, and I was worried he'd bring his manic schtick to the holiday chestnut.
But against all odds, I found Carrey surprisingly restrained in the role of that old miser Ebenezer Scrooge. And thankfully the film avoids the snarky tone and dumb jokes of recent animated fare in favor of a fairly straight forward re-telling of an old miser who learns the true meaning of Christmas.

Carrey fares far better with Scrooge than he does with the parts of the three ghosts. His scrooge is a delightful concoction of humbuggery without being too off the wall. But the three ghosts seem less like characters and more like props dreamed up as an excuse to show off whatever digital animation wizadry the filmmakers happen to be taken with that day. The ghost of Christmas Past is a floating candle (of all things,) and Carrey speaks in a ghostly whisper that becomes grating almost instantly.

The Ghost of Christmas Present is a more traditional image who waves his big flaming torch around for no reason.
But it does feature a cool, and pretty scary sequence where the ghost goes all "last crusade" on us and his flesh literally falls off as he disintegrates right before our eyes. The Ghost of Christmas Future is predictably menacing, but also a bit boring.

Director Robert Zemeckis seems to be the only one captivated by motion capture technology. He's back again with it here, and thankfully most of the animated characters have lost that evil dead eyed look they had in "The Polar Express." Scrooge is almost lifelike- a detailed landscape of wrinkles, imperfections, with a chin seemingly inspired by jay leno. And most of the time Bob Crachet looks remarkably like Gary Oldman. But every now and then the characters still seem like animatronic versions of themselves- believable only up to a point.

The 3-D sequences are actually pretty good. But the filmmakers indulge in too much "look at me" roller coaster flying sequences that seem out of sync with the rest of the film. Since Jim Carrey played it relatively straight, I guess the filmmakers decided to let the animators do the acting up instead.

Although It's not the best adaptation of the story that everyone with a pulse already knows by heart, It still warmed my heart with its Christmas cheer. And there's nothing wrong with that.

"A Christmas Carol:" B-