Disney’s 3D retelling of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” focuses more on social commentary than on pure holiday movie fun, highlighting disparities in wealth and good fortune among social classes. The movie is a dark one, both visually and in tone, in order to express the difficulty of Victorian life and the darkness of Ebenezer Scrooge’s hardened attitude and outlook. Some scenes were so eerie and surreal yet magical that one might think Tim Burton had directed the film.
Indeed, the movie is not well-suited for young children, as one screaming child in the theater found the scene in which the ghost of Scrooge’s business partner Jacob Marley appears particularly frightful. That said, the three-dimensional animation of this classic movie remake delights and amazes. Director Robert Zemeckis and his several hundred person staff clearly devoted huge amounts of time and effort to the production of the movie. The artfully crafted characters seem part human, part doll.
This characterization expressed the childlike, pure nature of many of the characters, particularly Bob Cratchit (Gary Oldman), while also conveying in them an almost cartoonish exhaustion from the difficulties of everyday life in the Victorian era.
Playing a multitude of roles, Jim Carrey is the star of the show. Playing Scrooge at five different times of his life as well as the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, Carrey, in his ghostly roles, coaxes Scrooge out of his “bah-humbug” attitude and into a full appreciation of the people around him and the holiday season.
Some deviations from Dickens’ book are made during the ghost of Christmas future portion of the movie, but through this artistic license, Carrey conveys a nearly universal fear of death and regret for past actions. As always, the moral of the classic tale is to appreciate relationships with others and to share good fortune and a joyful attitude with all humankind.
Robin Penn Wright, who plays Belle, Scrooge’s former love, described the realism of the creative technique used for the film.
“It’s like watching a 2D performance, but you feel like you can reach out and grab Jim’s hand and feel the snow falling at the same time,” she told Rick DeMott in his Nov. 6 article for Animation World Network. “You’re actually in the environment. That’s what’s so incredible about it.”
With such realistic 3D effects, one might wonder how the film was created. According to the movie’s official Web site, “The film is the first film developed by ImageMovers Digital, which was created by Robert Semeckis, Steve Starkey and Jack Rapke to develop 3D performance capture films exclusively for The Walt Disney Studios.”
So, what exactly is the creative process for making performance capture films?
“In performance capture technology, sensors attached to an actor’s body digitally capture their performance and create a life-based animated character in the computer,” Duane Dudek, Journal Sentinel film critic, wrote in his Nov. 15 2007 blog entry.
“A Christmas Carol” is not the first performance capture film, but it is Disney’s first. Zemeckis used the technique in “Beowulf,” and “Sony Pictures Imageworks pioneered the technique with ‘The Polar Express’ and ‘Monster House,’” according to a July 26, 2007 article in Variety.
“A Christmas Carol,” a delightful yet dark holiday classic, pleases audiences with amazing 3D effects and fantastic performances by Jim Carrey. It also foretells the future of Disney movies — a bright and interesting future indeed. Four of five stars.
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