Scrooge [Jim Carrey] is the coldest of hearts in the town of London all throughout the year and unlike most men it doesn’t change even come Christmas time.  Most would even say he becomes even colder thanks to the weather.  Seven years after his business partner Marley [Gary Oldman] passes away he is visited by Marley’s spirit and warned that he is on his path to a heavy afterlife.  That night Scrooge is visited by three more spirits (the spirit of Christmas Past, Present and To Come) all with the intention of showing Scrooge not only the error of his ways but the true meaning that is Christmas.

So the first question I have to ask is do I have to worry about spoilers for a story that originated in 1843 when first published by Charles Dickens?  When I search IMDb for the character Ebenezer Scrooge there are 70 entries that he has appeared in (inclusive of plays, movies and TV specials).  So is there someone out there who hasn’t heard this story before enough times to make him gag at the thought of someone saying humbug?  Watching this movie I felt more that Zemeckis wanted to take a standard that was impossible for him to ruin and experiment with all of his new toys (i.e. 3D filmmaking) rather than make a good adaptation of the classic tale.

Now let me make myself clear.  This is a brilliant film, but it is a film that we’ve seen so many times that making a shot for shot remake in 3D doesn’t mean anything more than a disgusting Hollywood cash grab.  Another thing that made me even more disappointed by the movie is that the trailers all sold it as a comedic take on the story, but even with a couple moments where you realise this is Jim Carrey playing Scrooge that you may chuckle at the movie is a serious take on the story.

With all that said this is a technically brilliant production.  The acting is great, the 3D was stellar and the direction was brilliant.  One thing that had my jaw on the floor was the animation.  It became very obvious to me that the animators didn’t just grab Carrey’s voice and then animate the characters to match his inflections but it felt more like Carey had gone through a tedious motion-capture process because I don’t think anyone can animate Jim Carrey better than Carrey himself and Scrooge felt like Carrey.  Now if you want to know what would be hilarious, it has to be the footage of Carrey in a green room acting as Scrooge.

This movie is one of the few 3D movies that was conceived with 3D in mind.  So was the 3D good?  No, it was great.  The sense of depth you get as you watch Scrooge hide behind his comfy chair in the dead of night and the spirits come for him is spectacular.  I found even myself being brought into the world as Scrooge would just walk around the town and watching the snowflakes coming down and being able to tell where each one was falling.  It just looked gorgeous.

In the end the film suffers from having to spend its runtime rather than giving us something interesting just going through the motions.  I wouldn’t recommend you waste your time with this movie unless you find yourself really connected with this tale and are that kind of person that needs to see it once a year around Christmas (and even then that’s still a month away).

IMDB says 7.2/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 80%

I say 6.0/10