If there is a more execrable adaptation of this much-loved story then I have yet to come across it.
Its lack of soul borders on the heretical, its humour so out of step with the sophisticated and subtle wit of Dickens that the entire project is as close to shameful as it is possible to get.
Jim Carrey, an actor for whom I usually have great affection and admiration, is self-indulgent in the extreme and has a bewildering lack of affinity for - or understanding of - the original story and its true meaning. His accents are both mystifying and wholly unnecessary and one can't help but wonder whether any one of his three 'named' co-stars Colin Firth, Gary Oldman or Bob Hoskins, might actually have done a far superior job.
Zemeckis, who has become something of an evangelist for live motion capture, appears to have failed, in rather spectacular fashion, to have grasped the fact that A Christmas Carol is a story about human redemption that has, at its core, a religious context ('Have you many brothers?' 'More than eighteen hundred' references the birth of Christ and suggests that each Ghost of Christmas, whether past, present or future, is an incarnation of Christ himself). Instead Zemeckis treats this as a straightforward ghost story, in the process removing the very heart of the message the story seeks to deliver.
If you're looking for a heart-warming version of an ageless classic, choose Alastair Sim or Albert Finney or even George C. Scott. Choose Patrick Stewart or Kelsey Grammar. Choose the Muppets. But leave this one well alone.
Its lack of soul borders on the heretical, its humour so out of step with the sophisticated and subtle wit of Dickens that the entire project is as close to shameful as it is possible to get.
Jim Carrey, an actor for whom I usually have great affection and admiration, is self-indulgent in the extreme and has a bewildering lack of affinity for - or understanding of - the original story and its true meaning. His accents are both mystifying and wholly unnecessary and one can't help but wonder whether any one of his three 'named' co-stars Colin Firth, Gary Oldman or Bob Hoskins, might actually have done a far superior job.
Zemeckis, who has become something of an evangelist for live motion capture, appears to have failed, in rather spectacular fashion, to have grasped the fact that A Christmas Carol is a story about human redemption that has, at its core, a religious context ('Have you many brothers?' 'More than eighteen hundred' references the birth of Christ and suggests that each Ghost of Christmas, whether past, present or future, is an incarnation of Christ himself). Instead Zemeckis treats this as a straightforward ghost story, in the process removing the very heart of the message the story seeks to deliver.
If you're looking for a heart-warming version of an ageless classic, choose Alastair Sim or Albert Finney or even George C. Scott. Choose Patrick Stewart or Kelsey Grammar. Choose the Muppets. But leave this one well alone.
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