- Jim Carrey as Scrooge
So, just caught a screening last night, and I was pleasantly surprised at how good this movie was! I’ve seen most of the animated films of recent in their 3D format, and before this one, Coraline stood out as the most impressive (successful) 3D movie. However that title definitely goes to A Christmas Carol now.
Firstly I want to address the concerns people had about the film looking like it was made using an old computer console. I too was disappointed with the first trailer but when I saw the extended trailer in 3D in front of another movie I was gobsmacked. It looked ten times better – the depth and lighting really came to life.
What impressed me most about the 3D was that it was finally being used as a tool to tell the story, you did indeed feel like at times you were on a ride and you were right there taking part – some might dislike this though, personal preference really. The snow ah man the snow was so good! Like to hear what others thought of the snow 
Actually I came out thinking ohh Zemeckis is getting more creative, he’s actually doing things which I doubt everyday cinema goers will like, some stuff felt really surreal and this was helped by the use of the 3D.
Another memorable element to the film was the use of ambient noise in numerous darker scenes, so few films give you the time to appreciate whats happening but this film didn’t speed along (other than a few chase like scenes that is), it took the time to explore a moment and then all the ambient sounds came to life as though you were in a theatre. I noticed this during spooky moments and in most of the conversations in Scrooges office.. this worked to great effect!
The animation is 10x better than Polar Express, finally the characters feel apart of the artistic world Zemeckis has designed – no more stiff motion here. I also thought that the hair and skin was beautifully rendered. There was the occasional scene where I thought the bump/disp maps were too heavy which made me think they were all dried up, but this was only evident from time to time. The lighting was one of my fav parts, the guys at Image Movers really paid attention to the original sketches I think and when you see the street scenes, I swear it looks like a moving painting from ye olde days. Great Work! Very pleasing to the eye. Jim Carrey was well cast and I have to say that he really helped sell the Scrooge character. It was great to see such extended character scenes, this seems a rare thing these days in animation – there were some really lengthly conversations which I loved!
I’m still not convinced this film will go down well with the younger audiences – cheap ride tricks aside. It is NOT light hearted, in my opinion its quite close to Dickens book. There are some very dark and scary moments and the dialogue is very close to the books thus some might find parts hard to comprehend. 5 stars to Zemeckis for deciding not to modernise the story in any way or form – period piece indeed. That said, I really wish I could have seen it from a kids perspective rather than an adults.
