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The holiday season arrives earlier than usual this year with the release of the umpteenth film take on the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol.

But this version is unlike any you've seen before.

Written and directed by Robert Zemeckis and featuring the vocal work of Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Cary Elwes, Bob Hoskins, and Robin Wright Penn, Disney's A Christmas Carol is Dickens for the 21st century.

It's a dazzling animation feature that pushes the limits of technology even further than Zemeckis did previously with 2004's The Polar Express and 2007's Beowulf.

Shown in 3D, A Christmas Carol features an absorbing depth of field; thankfully, the gimmicky effects are kept to a minimum.

And its CG animated humans appear increasingly lifelike and less rubbery - their interactions with the world around them more natural.

A Christmas Carol is truly a wonder to behold ... too bad the film doesn't have the script to match its aesthetics.

Disney's A Christmas Carol

Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Screenplay by Zemeckis, based on the novel by Charles Dickens. A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures release, opening today at Cinemas De Lux Franklin Park and Maumee and Showcases Levis Commons and Fallen Timbers. Rated PG for scary sequences and images. Running time: 96 minutes.
Critic's rating: oo½
Voices:
Scrooge/Ghosts Jim Carrey
Bob Cratchit Gary Oldman
Fred Colin Firth
ooooo Outstanding; oooo Very Good; ooo Good; oo Fair; o Poor

The story follows the timeless tale of Ebenezer Scrooge (Carrey), an ill-tempered penny-pincher who wants nothing to do with charity or kindness. He browbeats his only employee, Bob Cratchit (Oldman) - for taking off Christmas Day - and frightens the smiles off everyone he encounters on the street with his menacing scowl.

On Christmas Eve, the cursed spirit of Scrooge's late business partner, Jacob Marley (Oldman), appears to warn him that three Christmas spirits - Ghost of Christmas Past, Ghost of Christmas Present, Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come - will visit him that night to offer redemption.

Through those hauntings, Scrooge is witness to the good-natured soul he used to be and the monster he's become, dooming himself to spend an afterlife of misery as penance for his rotten behavior.

Zemeckis is torn between slavishly following the Victorian-era tale or using current technology to transform the film into anything but the same-old Christmas Carol.

Paralyzed by his indecision, he takes a stab at both.

A Christmas Carol launches as a faithful, though rather dull, retelling of the holiday classic before it morphs into a showy spectacle with the arrival of the Ghost of Christmas Past and the Ghost of Christmas Present. There's an eye-popping magic to the breathtaking sequences of Scrooge being zipped through the air just above the snowy streets and tree-lined hills to his various encounters with his past and present. Surprisingly though, these events provide little illumination of his character, and hardly seem like the soul-changing moments necessary for Scrooge to recant his miserly ways.

The film's most maddening moment comes during an inexplicable chase sequence between Scrooge and the shadowy spectre that is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. The Ghost takes on the guise of a stagecoach driver leading two coal-black steeds with devilish red eyes in an attempt to run down a horrified Scrooge in the city streets.

He manages one narrow escape after another before he is suddenly shrunk to the size of a mouse as the chase continues.

Is his tiny stature a reminder of what a small man he is in life, despite his wealth? It seems doubtful that A Christmas Carol would go this deep. More likely, such an odd twist was placed for the film to showcase its 3D effects. And the tactic may have worked if the tone of the film had been decidedly more irreverent and subversive from the start, much like the 1988 Bill Murray vehicle Scrooged.

Instead, such a random event seems out of place, as if high-budget effects were planted in the middle of Alastair Sim's 1951 classic Scrooge.

Perhaps just as puzzling is the casting of Carrey as the English Scrooge. Carrey adheres to the film's mostly somber tone, but that seems a waste of his talents as a mostly comic actor. And by playing the role straight, what does Carrey bring to the part - other than a faux British accent and name recognition? This makes the decision to cast him as the voices of the three apparitions equally baffling.

Perhaps Zemeckis wanted to convey a link between Scrooge and his ghostly visitors. This would explain why Carrey's visage was used as facial templates for the Ghost of Christmas Past and the Ghost of Christmas Present, distracting as it may be.

As wondrous as A Christmas Carol may look now, in three decades the film will look every bit as dated as a Rankin-Bass Christmas special does today.

Try as Zemeckis and Carrey might, A Christmas Carol is anything but a holiday classic.

Contact Kirk Baird at:
kbaird@theblade.com
or 419-724-6734.