Robert Zemeckis still making movie magic - ‘A Christmas Carol’ Review

Posted on November 11, 2009 - 6:54am by michael Okay, so first of all, get that “Disney’s” out of your head. This is, and always has been, Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, and perhaps the strongest of the many strengths of Robert Zemeckis’ new adaptation of the classic novel is how faithful it is to the source material. I’ve heard a lot of complaints and concern about the movie being too scary for kids, which only highlights a developing problem with modern animated films – the fact that everyone still assumes that animation automatically means the movies are made for kids. A Christmas Carol is not a children’s movie, it’s a family movie. But more importantly, it’s not a Disney film, it’s a faithful adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel and, need I remind you, Charles Dickens’ novel is a ghost story. In order to be able to count myself as one of the informed critics who are writing about the movie, I took the liberty of re-reading the novel this morning, and right away it becomes clear how closely the movie follows the book. You may find yourself quoting the characters, depending on how long it’s been since you read the book, which is one of the most important factors about movies made from novels, especially classic ones. Zemeckis does take us on some thrilling rides that were a little outside Dicken’s realm, but keep in mind that the book was published in 1843, long before anyone could even begin to imagine movies or television, much less special effects. And the special effects, by the way, are brilliant. Zemeckis once again uses the same motion capture photography that he used in The Polar Express in 2004, and the results are even more impressive this time. Everyone in the cast is playing a whole list of different characters again, and Zemeckis wraps Dickens’ classic story amidst stunning visuals and breathtaking action sequences that inject new life into the well-known story without ever compromising its message or losing sight of its spirit. Charles Dickens was always a proponent of social reform, one of the central themes of "A Christmas Carol, and it remains the central theme of the film. [caption id="attachment_63379" align="alignright" width="338" caption="Scrooge gets ready to go for the ride of his life."][/caption] Scrooge, as you know, isn’t just some grumpy old man, he represents all of the social callousness against the poor that Dickens hated. I remember when The Polar Express was released five years ago with its innovative new motion capture shooting style, and people worried that maybe one day actors would just put a lot of those little crystals all over their faces and do their acting at home and then just email in their performances, or if actors might even be able to appear in new films after their deaths. The former seems pretty unlikely, but if they can store actors’ performances for later use and they can make it look this good, I say keep them coming. There’s no need for me to go into the plot of the movie because surely you already know it well enough. The important thing is that Jim Carrey is able to give a performance as Ebenezer Scrooge without ever making it look like a rubber-faced Jim Carrey creation. He is Scrooge all the way, in his all rude, vicious meanness, true to Dickens' original description of him:

He was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.

And the effects are a visual feast and the sound mixing gives an added layer of depth to the already brilliantly rendered atmosphere, which is in Victorian London, where it belongs. And most of all, I’m glad that Zemeckis smartly resisted the treacherous temptation to use his ultra-modern special effects to have the Ghost of Christmas Yet-To-Come escort Scrooge through dreary streets of 21^st century London. I don’t know why I thought that was coming, but I’m glad it didn’t. Instead we get thrilling trips through the sky as the three Ghosts take Scrooge around England, showing him his own hometown, his school, a company where he was an apprentice, and then the suffering that is common among the poor folks, the ones that Scrooge said should go ahead and die and reduce the population surplus. I like to think that most people don’t think like he does, but you don’t have to be a Scrooge to benefit from the story, there’s something in it for all of us and that’s what has made it such an enduring classic. It embodies the proverbial Christmas spirit like almost no other story ever told has done, and the filmmaking team behind the newest adaptation realize that there is no need to fool with the substance of it all, opting instead to give us a visual presentation of the story that is indeed like none other ever created, and in that they have been a smashing success. Some people will still complain that the animation isn’t life-like enough or the characters looked too much like the actors playing them (funny that you don’t hear this complaint more about live-action movies, isn’t it? Yeah Zemeckis, Cast Away was cool and everything, but that Chuck Nolan looked exactly like Tom Hanks. Can't you do something about that?) or, shallowest of all, that the movie was too scary. This is such a bizarre complaint. Anything scary that you see in the movie is all right there in the book. If you have a problem with it, go complain to the Charles Dickens Estate. Yes, there are scary moments in the movie. The sound effects alone of the ghost of Scrooge’s old partner Jacob Marley clanking down the cold, empty hallways of Scrooge’s decrepit house will be enough to scare the youngest in the audience right out of the theater. But to make the original story more palatable for the youngest audience members wouldn’t have been softening it, it would have been dumbing it down, and I for one am glad to see that that didn’t happen. Life isn’t always happy and pretty. Sometimes it’s dark and cold and harsh and, yes, sometimes it’s scary, but Dickens had a very real message that he wanted to deliver, and it was delivered in the hands of four ghosts who were very serious about getting the point across. We learn in the opening scene of the movie that Scrooge isn’t the most receptive of agents when it comes to humanitarianism, so nice, kid-friendly ghosts would have been completely missing the point. I’ve noticed that the Christmas movie season has started conspicuously early this year, but it’s also starting with one of the best Christmas film adaptations I’ve yet seen. Bravo! The Bean Meter