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Friday, Nov. 06, 2009

A grimmer 'Carol' wastes Carrey

Movie Review

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The new Disney "A Christmas Carol" is another epic achievement in motion-capture animation, advancing the art form closer to photo-realism than "The Polar Express" or "Beowulf."

Dazzling, ornate visuals take us to the snowy London of 1837, swooping over its digital rooftops and down its digital chimneys. Faces take on musculature, expression and detail.

But like those earlier films, and certainly to a greater degree given the pathos, warmth and wit of the story, "A Christmas Carol" lacks and needs — desperately — that human touch.

That cinematic literalist Robert Zemeckis, who in Forrest Gump had a character say "I'm going to San Francisco" and then scored the scene with the pop song "If You're Going to San Francisco," gives us Dickens straight, no chaser. He grasps the tone of the Charles Dickens novel (darker than most film versions). He lays out the familiar story beats and even more familiar lines.

"Make some slight provision for the poor ... Decrease the surplus population ... boiled in their own pudding ... Christmas? Bah, humbug." And of course, "Gaw-bless us, every one!"

But as Jim Carrey slings an English accent for Scrooge, an Irish one for the Ghost of Christmas Past and a vague Scots one for his Ghost of Christmas Present, as his skinnier, more curmudgeonly digital self does little Scrooge dances and collapses into grief, I wanted to see the real Jim Carrey perform that.

And I really missed having the real Gary Oldman, as Bob Cratchit, registering grief at Tiny Tim's fate, and heartfelt shock at Mr. Scrooge's conversion.

What Zemeckis delivers is a spooky "Christmas Carol," aptly released just a week after Halloween. A creepy quiet hangs over the tale of a wealthy miser who is taught the meaning of Christmas by a series of ghosts — corpses come to life, or in the case of the Ghost of Christmases Yet to Come, a spectral shadow, the literal Grim Reaper.

The laughs are few and very far between. Carrey's Ghost of Christmas Past is a candle and the animated version of the actor goofs around with the idea of "flickering." But that begs the question — "Why cast Jim Carrey if you're not going to let him be funny?" Turning him into Bacchus (Christmas Present) and making him laugh is no substitute for the playfulness each role allows.

The digital avatars for Carrey, Oldman, Colin Firth (nephew Fred) and Robin Wright Penn (Fan and Belle) aren't particularly flattering to the actors.

But by Fezziwig, that story still works and tugs at the heart. It would even if each ghost's visit weren't scored with overly-suitable Christmas carols.

The chilling moments are many, as this gorgeous-looking "Christmas Carol" embraces, better than most, the novel's cautionary and always timely message. When it comes to money, love and compassion, stinginess is no virtue. You simply cannot take any of them with you.