Disney's A Christmas Carol

Here is yet another one of those movies based on a book! This time it is the another adaption of the classic by Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol". It was first published in 1843 and the buzz has not stopped since. There have been numerous versions of this movie put in cartoons, live-action movies, plays, operas, musicals, and also attempted prequels/sequels to the book. This story has been shown in so many ways that there are even books that exist just to tell you about the adaptions that "A Christmas Carol" has been turned into.

This book's storyline is well-known but in case you do not know it, I will try to describe it now while not ruining it. The book starts off with the death of Ebenezer Scrooge's business partner. It then skips 7 years later to show a greedy rude Scrooge who does not waste a single schilling on anything. On that Christmas Eve Scrooge is then visted by the ghost of his partner who is in heavy chains. The ghost then warns Scrooge that he will ge haunted by three ghosts that night. These 3 spirits are the bright ghost of Christmas past, the joyous ghost of Christmas present, and the dark and mysterious ghost of Christmas yet to come.

In this edition of the Disney adaptions, legendary director Robert Zemeckis takes control and uses his unique motion capture animation. To top that Jim Carrey takes the position as Scrooge and also plays quite a few other roles in this movie. His facial expressions really add to the characters he plays and brings more life to the movie. There is also a flashback that shows what Scrooge was like when he was younger. Using the motion capture makes young Scrooge looks just like Jim Carrey did in "The Truman Show".

Besides great casting, the animation is awesome! It is sort of cheating though because it uses real-life people in front of a green screen acting it out and then animation is layed over that (motion capture). Most of what is on screen is animation though, and it looks so real! The thing that I did not find right with this though is that Zemeckis is going through all of the trouble to make things look realistic but then he makes characters do unbelievable dance moves which ruins it a bit. The camera angles are some of the best I have seen for a movie and make you feel like you are really gliding through the sky. This could be because I saw it in IMAX 3D but I still think that it would have been pretty cool without it. What would a movie with such a title be without a few carols? A few songs such as "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" are included and even the main score for the movie is some sort of instrumental remix of "Deck The Halls". The makers of this were clearly not afraid of using anything religious which I give them bonus points for.


This movie may look like a good ol' family movie but it can be a scary at a few parts. There are the ghosts that I mentioned, but only 2 out of 4 of them I would consider scary. At one part, there are many tortured ghost seen floating around London and could really make a little kid want to scream. There is also a dead body shown as the first thing in the movie and a body is shown later on turning from flesh to skeleton to dust. There is no bad language in the film except for during a game of charades in which Scrooge briefly mentioned as the other name of a donkey. There is also nothing sexual in this movie.

To summarize it tops any other version of the story that I have ever seen. It is also the best film that I have seen in 3D. The 3D effects are really put to use and are worth the extra money if you have it. I don't think that this movie would be all that frightening when it comes out on DVD(or blu-ray), the largeness of the movie I think would really just creep a little one out.