A Christmas Carol (2009)

In the 166 years since Charles Dickens penned A Christmas Carol, there have been no shortage of actors to don the sleeping cap of curmudgeonly Ebenezer Scrooge. From Reginald Owen and Alastair Sim to George C. Scott and Patrick Stewart (a personal favorite), he’s been played by the very best of them. He’s also been reimagined as a cynical television executive (Scrooged), a ruthless department store owner (Ebbie), and even a petulant pop princess (A Diva’s Christmas Carol). All these versions have left some roomy shoes for Jim Carrey to fill, even without 3-D animation making them seem all the larger. And while Carrey’s feet prove big enough, Robert Zemeckis’ computer-generated rendition hardly does the holiday favorite justice.

The story is a familiar one. A penny-pinching English accountant named Scrooge is perennially unkind to everyone around him, including his long-suffering employee, Bob Cratchit (Gary Oldman), and Fred, his optimistic nephew (Colin Firth). For Scrooge, Christmas proves no excuse to loosen up the purse strings or ease up on the “bahs” and the “humbugs”. That is, until the ghostly apparition of his old business partner Marley (Oldman again; he also plays Tiny Tim) ushers in a night where Scrooge is forced to take a long, hard look at his past, present, and potential future with the help of three spirits. Scared straight, the grumpy old man learns to keep the spirit of the season in his heart every day of the year.

There’s a reason Dickens’ classic has been evergreen. It’s simple and sentimental, yes, but also truthful and moving. Zemeckis is smart to stay as close as he does to the original story and its language. His 3-D snow falls on the streets of Victorian London, its belching smoke stacks, and wassailing working class. But Zemeckis fails when he veers off, for example by using that Polar Express magic to scrub the streets clean of downtrodden urchins. Anyone who knows Dickens (a guy who names characters things like Mr. M’Choakumchild) knows that they’re really who this story is about. This animated London is so neat and clean that there’s hardly a reason — beyond a visit from a charity-seeking fat man (Cary Elwes) — to suspect they even exist.

Instead, the focus moves to all of the “amazing” things — like flying halfway to the moon, shrinking down to the size of a mouse, and dropping burning embers practically in your lap — that CGI technology can do. Certainly, the under 10 set will be wowed by some of this visual flamboyance, but there isn’t anything that the adults will find so impressive that it justifies the uncomfortable plastic 3D glasses they must wear for the film’s entirety.

Perhaps it will also be acceptable to the young’uns that all of the minor characters have the completely smooth, expressionless faces of Wii avatars. Apparently, there was only enough money in Zemeckis’ sizeable budget to performance capture Carrey, Robin Wright Penn (as Scrooge’s blink-and-you-miss-it first love), and a veritable who’s who of British actors to not yet appear in the Harry Potter series, including Bob Hoskins and Fionnula Flanagan.

Carrey, doing quadruple duty as each of the three spirits as well as Scrooge, is remarkably restrained. Illustrated as a flicker of candlelight, his Ghost of Christmas Past is light and playful, while his Ghost of Christmas Present moves seamlessly from jolly fat man to frightening spectre of the future (this is the one scene where the film’s technology really works). For their part, the British brigade does a fine job. Firth is likeable, as always. Oldman’s Cratchit and Tim are as soft and jovial as his Marley is unsettling. But it’s hard not to think about the fantastic job that actors of this caliber could have done had they been allowed to show their real faces and bodies.

It’s not that A Christmas Carol is a bad film. Thanks to its source material, it would have to work a lot harder to really screw the pooch. Still, technology and innovation for their own sake (as is clearly the case here) prove that they aren’t reason enough to remake a tale this familiar. Sometimes you really can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

If you enjoyed this review of A Christmas Carol, you might also like:

• Yes Man
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs