Disney's A Christmas Carol

Robert Zemeckis does the 3D technique right. He uses it more for depth than for knives and forks and fingers stabbing out at you. I want to see into a picture, not have it poking its nose out at me. He practiced with Polar Express, he honed his technique on the throwaway Beowulf, and now he returns to the family-oriented Christmas story with his fast-paced rendition of A Christmas Carol. It sure is pretty to look at, and the story's all there, but it felt like someone was telling it to me on the way to the airport, and we only had ten minutes to spare.

A lot of reviewers have commented on the artificiality of the characters in Zemeckis's motion capture films. They don't quite look human, but they look so life-like, rather than cartoony, that it makes them look like aliens with cold eyes impersonating the human visage. This worked for me in Polar Exress because it was a fairy tale. It worked for the Angelina Jolie character in Beowulf because she was a monster, but not so much for the brawny Vikings, who came off wooden, and weren't helped by their dialogue. It works in A Christmas Carol, because the characters, especially Scrooge and Crachet, have exaggerated visages that represent their personalities - Scrooge is tall, rail thin, with a long vulture's nose and a jutting jaw; Crachet is squat, lazy, with a bulging, flabby face, and rosy plump cheeks. They're cartoony, rather than life like.

Zemeckis has always been a master at the long take; at moving his camera through great depths, with twists and turns and focal changes, and he can get away with even more now that he isn't constrained by the physical world of lights and sets and dolly tracks. The way motion capture works, they have a 360 degree set, with cameras set up all around it that capture it from every angle, and then Zemeckis goes in and chooses which angles to keep. He can move where ever he wants, whenever he wants, and light it however he wants. That freedom is on full display here, and it's wonderful; He flies you up and down and all around his Victorian town, over church steeples, high up in the air, down with a coffin in the ground, and through floors and ceilings. It would have been impossible or very expensive (and likely artificial-looking) to capture his Christmas Carol any other way.

A Christmas Carol is a tale born for animation, and it has been animated several times before, but never with this level of detail and darkness. The sets suck you into their shadows and grime, their cobwebs and dank cobblestone streets. The level of detail seems wholly authentic, right down to the crooked yellow teeth and frayed clothes of its characters. You will marvel at the imaginative representation of the three ghosts, from the candlestick and flame head Ghost of Christmas Past, to the boisterous, billowing giant of Christmas Present. You will want to walk the streets and frequent the pubs and squares. Scrooge's mansion could give Monster House a run for its money. It's something to say that I felt a pang of sympathy for all those people who had to endure living in such an era, where the only heat came from the hearth, and even then, you could see your breath when you walked away.

The problem with A Christmas Carol is obviously not in its design or its direction, or even in its acting, done mostly by Jim Carrey (voicing eight roles). Its problem is with its pacing. I realize it is Charles Dickens' shortest work, probably by more than 400 pages, but that doesn't mean it has to zing by. It felt to me that once the first ghost visited, the whole movie went in fast forward, and was over with in a snap, without allowing Scrooge to pontificate on his happiness as a lad, to regret the crushing blow he dealt his one true love, to wallow in the misery of his future, the loss of Tiny Tim, the mockery that is made of him by his nephew, and the empty nature of his lonely demise.

Sure, all those things happen, but they happen like that. Scrooge comments briefly on them, and is almost allowed to wrinkle his brow in thought, but then it's off to the races, and he's dragged along - or coasts through the air to - his next appointment, and after awhile, it was just moving paintings, pretty pictures, and lots of details without any intimacy or lasting emotion behind them. By the time the Ghost of Christmases Yet To Come arrived, I had my hands out in front of me saying, "Slow down! Slow down! I want to look at that building a little while longer! I want to examine your outfit!"

There is no patience with this movie. It should have been two hours long. It should have lingered with its story instead of racing through it. Just because we've heard it all before doesn't mean you shouldn't take your time telling it to us again, especially when you have the time, money, and power to make it look this beautiful.