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Updated Friday, November 6, 2009 9:40 am TWN, By Susannah Rosenblatt, Special to The China Post

A Christmas Carol 聖誕夜怪譚

With so much to look at, Zemeckis makes good use of the 3-D technology. Unlike Pixar's “Up,” released earlier this year, in which the 3-D seemed like an afterthought, “A Christmas Carol” keeps things interesting with plenty of action — snowflakes, spirits, shiny black horses of death – hurled directly at viewers. Parents take note: all those ghosts, dark colors and loud noises might be too scary for the youngest viewers.

The movie really belongs to Carrey. The rubber-faced actor plays Scrooge through the ages and all three ghosts. His British, Irish and Scottish accents sound passable, and his portrayal of Scrooge is engaging, though disappointingly serious. He lets loose a little at the end, once Scrooge is delirious with Christmas cheer, but overall the tone is grim and short on comic interludes.

The appearance of realistic animated people using performance capture, in which real actors end up digitized in some form, still leaves me a little cold. While Scrooge and Marley look fantastic, Scrooge's nephew Fred (Colin Firth), appears a little cross-eyed and the dancing of Scrooge's former boss Mr. Fezziwig (Bob Hoskins), seems off. Not quite full animation, not quite live action, the human beings rendered using performance capture at times fall into an uneasy gap between the two, the so-called “uncanny valley.” Zemeckis is a veteran of the filmmaking technique, using it to varying degrees of success in “The Polar Express” in 2004 and “Beowulf” in 2007.

Hedging its bets against an unproven format, Disney outfitted four custom train cars with artifacts, costumes, props and digital demonstrations from “A Christmas Carol,” zigzagging 16,000 miles across the United States since May to visit 40 cities and whet moviegoers' appetites (even if it is only November).

There will most certainly be a built-in audience for this film. Full of beautiful, action-packed visuals and a timeless moral of kindness and charity, “A Christmas Carol” is definitely a solid choice for family holiday viewing. The 3-D technology, also formatted for large IMAX screens, knocks a bit of dust off the shopworn tale. Zemeckis and Carrey certainly don't reinvent Dickens' story, nor do they try to. You know how it's going to end, and the script could have contained a few more twists, but Disney's nifty new take on “A Christmas Carol” sure does look good.

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	The movie really belongs to Carrey. The rubber-faced actor plays Scrooge through the ages and all three ghosts. His British, Irish and Scottish accents sound passable, and his portrayal of Scrooge is engaging, though disappointingly serious. (Courtesy of Disney Taiwan) Enlarge Photo


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