A New Take on a Classic

Everyone has heard of the Charles Dickens classic known as A Christmas Carol. There have been so many interpretations over the years, whether it be animated, live-action, even Muppets (!) that one would think that there would be no other way to make the story fresh anymore. Well director Robert Zemeckis found a way and through the magic of IMAX and 3D, his version of A Christmas Carol can stand proudly with the best of them.

In Victorian England, Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey) is miserable once again. It’s been a few years since his partner, Jacob Marley (Gary Oldman), has passed away and the miserly old moneylender hates giving employee Bob Cratchit (Gary Oldman) any days off, even if it is Christmas.  When Marley’s ghost visits Scrooge on Christmas Eve, Marley warns him that his miserable existence must change unless Scrooge also wants to be miserable in the afterlife. Three spirits haunt Scrooge, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. Together, they show the old man how he has wasted his life until that point and that a terrible fate awaits him if he does not repent.

As timeless and great as Dickens’ work is, this treatment of A Christmas Carol is different because of the exceptional animation that was undertaken to create it. Improving on the performance capture effects seen previously in The Polar Express and Beowulf, Zemeckis’ team at ImageMovers Digital have added so much detail to their characters that it’s a bit scary. Wrinkles on faces, liver spots on hands, and pores on skin are so clear, the only thing separating the animated characters from actual people is their colorful world and the situations they’re put into.

Seeing the movie in 3D and on the mammoth IMAX screen only served to enhance my enjoyment of it. Then again, every film I’ve seen on IMAX has been a fun experience. The 3D touches of falling snow, horses galloping, and other similar effects were nice to see, particularly on such a big canvas as the IMAX screen. Though there are a few times when the 3D can be a bit distracting, they are few and far between. I can say though that if I had seen A Christmas Carol in a regular cinema, I believe I would have still enjoyed it. I’ve heard that this treatment remains quite faithful to the original source material, something that I always appreciate in movie adaptations.

A friend told me that they hesitated to watch this film because he wasn’t a Jim Carrey fan. I reassured him, however, that if you didn’t know Carrey played Scrooge, you wouldn’t notice him. More than just adopting a British accent, Carrey just removes everything we’ve gotten used to about him to play the old miser as well as the three Christmas spirits. Oldman looks exactly like Cratchit so we can’t separate one from the other, but I believe Carrey really needed to separate himself from Scrooge in order to make the character work, and in my opinion, it does.