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100An exhilarating visual experience and proves for the third time he's (Zemeck) is one of the few directors who knows what he's doing with 3-D.
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100A marvelous and touching yuletide toy of a movie.
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88As beautiful as the animation is, Zemeckis' real masterstroke is combining it with a loyalty to Dickens' story.
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80The unspoken theme underlying Dickens's prose--that the money-grubbing Ebenezer is conversing with semblances of his own self--finds near-perfect cinematic expression through Carrey's efforts.
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80A ghost story, a bustling action-adventure and an example of the comedy tour-de-farce, in which the star validates his virtuosity by appearing in a plethora of funny disguises.
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75Could there possibly be anything left to gain from yet another adaptation of Charles Dickens' tale about crabby old Ebenezer Scrooge and his life-changing encounter with three ghosts on Christmas Eve? In the case of Disney's A Christmas Carol, the answer is a surprising, resounding yes -- at least so far as the IMAX 3D version goes.
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If some of the animation overdoes it, a lot of it is downright gorgeous. Few images this year have followed me home like the Ghost of Christmas Past, here imagined as a bright-flamed candle with the face of a child. It flickers. It whispers. It flies.
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75Shockingly, the new film turns out to be very good, at times close to brilliant: a darkly detailed marvel of creative visualization that does well by Dickens and right by audiences - when it's not trying to sell them a theme park ride.
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75There's something to be said for the power of a classic, even if it has been given an imperfect makeover.
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75This time, though, Zemeckis has another technical trick up his sleeve – 3-D – and for once the gimmick succeeds.
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70A Christmas Carol -- I mean the source material, without a corporate possessive attached to it -- remains among the most moving works of holiday literature, and Mr. Zemeckis has remained true to its finest sentiments. He is an innovator, but his traditionalism is what makes this movie work.
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70Nearly every line of dialogue in this adaptation of A Christmas Carol comes directly from the story. What interpolations there are have to do with juicing up the transitions between scenes with unnecessary, but not obnoxiously intrusive, action.
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67Carrey's Scrooge is deliciously pinched and credible. As, indeed, is this film -- that is, when it feels like Dickens and not a theme park ride.
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63Jim Carrey is good as Scrooge. There's surprisingly little shtick in his performance.
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60Like a dime-store holiday card, this Christmas Carol is well-crafted but artless, detailed but lacking soul.
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60It's always a good story, this time told more creepily than usual. Good, but not as good as The Muppets' Christmas Carol, Scrooged, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol or some great, classic live action classic versions.
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50Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol is, in its essence, a product reel, a showy, exuberant demonstration of the glories of motion capture, computer animation and 3D technology. On that level, it's a wow. On any emotional level, it's as cold as Marley's Ghost.
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50Gary Oldman pulls off his own hat trick, playing both noble Bob Cratchit and sickly Tiny Tim, as well as Scrooge's late partner, Marley, who haunts the miser in fluorescent green.
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50Unless the director was aiming for a Victorian "Black Christmas," though, he overshot his mark
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50Visually immersive but emotionally uninvolving.
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50This Christmas Carol seems like a pale ghost of Dickens' magical Christmas classic.
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50A fable that is by turns antic, scary, sweet and, in the end, slightly soulless. In other words, it's a heartwarmer that doesn't have much of a heart itself.
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50It's eerie rather than wondrous.
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A Christmas Carol is a whiz-bang 3-D thrill-ride with all the emotional satisfaction squeezed out of it.
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50Shortchanging traditional animation by literalizing it while robbing actors of their full range of facial expressiveness, the performance-capture technique favored by director Robert Zemeckis looks more than ever like the emperor's new clothes in Disney's A Christmas Carol.
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50Zemeckis captures all the story's terror, but its pathos has always been the real challenge, and it mostly eludes him.
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50The holiday spirit feels real, but the film does not.
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42Zemeckis tries to juice things up by staging numerous chase scenes up and around London, but do we really need "A Christmas Carol: The Action Picture"?
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40Either you cotton to Zemeckis' motion-capture aesthetic or you don't: To me, it seems like an awful lot of effort for an insignificant payoff. But it appears that the filmmaker is stuck on the technique – at least until holographic movie technology comes along.
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40The 3-D film is flat, the CGI-enhanced characters oddly waxen. In the center of the action is Jim Carrey -- or at least a dead-eyed, doll-like version of Carrey -- playing Scrooge, the ghosts, a younger version of himself, and probably a dozen other parts. As a general rule of thumb, one Jim Carrey is plenty for any movie.
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30What are in very short supply, though, are the central chords of Dickens' carol: Crachit's generous spirit, Tiny Tim's sad plight, Scrooge's emotional arc as he finds his humanity. Oh, the scenes are there amid the action, but they are fleeting. By the time A Christmas Carol finishes piling its many shiny presents with their many bells and whistles under the tree, there's no room left for tears for Tiny Tim. Bah humbug indeed.
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20This sad excuse for family entertainment tries to enshrine a classic while defacing it.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 28 out of 36
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Mixed: 2 out of 36
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Negative: 6 out of 36
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"A Christmas Carol" is a exhilarating Christmas movie that joyful remakes the original book into a marvelous interpretation.
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10I have heard the story of A Christmas Carol numerous times, but this adaption of the story is the greatest by far. It is darker than you would expect.
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JamesH10