I sit in my seat and look about to see my surroundings; I start to hear clicking sounds getting louder and louder. I start to fly around the city of London, looking around I see people having snowball fights with each other, singing Christmas songs. This might sound like the Star Tours “The Christmas Carol Edition” that would be at Disneyland. You might think wow that sounds kind of cool, well in this film it played out to be too much of something can be a bad thing. It sounds strange that Zemeckis could not pull off a simple adaptation. The last animated film we saw from Zemeckis was “Beowulf” which I found to be an excellent adaptation; it carried strong writing as well as excellent use of 3D effects.
“A Christmas Carol” was written by Charles Dickens, it tells the tale of a decrepit old man named Ebenezer Scrooge whom despises Christmas and anything or anyone to do with the holiday. So on Christmas night as Scrooge arrives home, he is visited by his old business partner Jacob Marley, who died many years ago, whom has come to warn him that three spirits will come to visit him to counsel him about the error of his ways.
Zemeckis adapted the writing from the book to film very well, he stuck relatively close to it but also put in a few things of his own as an attempt to mix up some originality to it. One part of it in particular was how the spirits were made use of, all of them were different from the many film adaptations, not only characteristically but also visually.
Jim Carrey portrayed the title role of Ebenezer Scrooge, he performs it in a story book manner to the point of how I imagined him to be. That has been Carrey’s strengths as a character actor. He usually does very well with other films such as “Man on the Moon” and “Eternal Sunshine of the spotless Mind” but when it’s a role like Ebenezer scrooge or even The Grinch, I feel its like his primary weapon in his arsenal and it shows in the film.
There were problems with the film and they varied, the film had a lot of what I call Zemeckis moments: in which there are tons of flying shots or just moments blown out of proportion. Where we follow scrooge flying around the city or we have overview fly bys of London itself, it felt like the 3D was very reliant on this factor. It felt like it was used about eighty percent of the film and that can cause many problems for people who would like to see it at a non 3D show. Those Zemeckis moments became very obnoxious and boring, I thought to myself “Jeez enough already!” and we all know Zemeckis has the creativity but it seemed like he was just relying strictly on the 3D and nothing else. That’s one of the big problems with the film, we have so many Zemeckis moments that it begins to bury the messages that the story is trying to tell.
Now with any vital thing to a film it comes to the marketing of it, from the posters and many of the trailers or spots I see that “A Christmas Carol” looks like a family fun Christmas movie. But don’t let this fool you, there is a lot of dark themed messages and spine chilling moments in a kids advertised film, that might spook younger audiences. I thought there was going to be much more humor to it and that’s what it lacked a lot of it to make it friendlier to kids. Yes to a point the Story in it self is serious, if you don’t change the error of your ways them bad things are going to happen to you. But you would expect with Zemeckis and holiday movies but its not, some parents might be rubbed the wrong way with it.
The story of “A Christmas Carol” is a simple one and a classic but overdoing effects and relying on it to carry the film actually brought it down for me, despite the strong acting and good writing. The effects became obnoxious and distracted from the story that was being attempted. But hey if people are into over done effects and Star Tour rides instead of a good film then that’s cool. I think the film should have been live action versus animated but well see if Zemeckis returns to it. But if he decides to then I got the perfect idea, partner up with the Wachowski’s and tell the tale of the three little pigs, over do the effects and combine some “Matrix” shoot outs and “Beowulf” acting like maybe Ray Winestone as the wolf. Throw in some dark themes, then we might have a movie on our hands. Oh and don’t forget the 3D as well, anyways hopefully the next Zemeckis product will be better and I know it can be done.
Rating: 
