Harry loved Zemeckis' A CHRISTMAS CAROL, but with mild trepidations...

Hosting the IMAX 3D screening of A CHRISTMAS CAROL at our local IMAX last night was bittersweet. Sweet, because we were seeing A CHRISTMAS CAROL before its world premiere in Hollywood tonight... Bitter, because my sister, nephew and wife could not attend. That wasn't at all a distraction during the movie, it was just... as I was leaving the theater with Father Geek - I found myself missing my own larger family. People were wishing each other Merry Christmas and talking about decorations - and I realized right then and there that this movie accomplishes exactly what it is supposed to. It conjures the joy, wonder and that desire one has for the Christmas season. I can say, with absolute certainty that I've never seen A CHRISTMAS CAROL produced like this. Not only was this IMAX 3D, but the camera moves and tracks with the characters as though it itself was a spirit. It was absolutely mesmerizing. The design of the characters comes straight out of the original illustrations for the original CHRISTMAS CAROL edition. The result is something never entirely human, never exactly a cartoon.... but some strange, bizarre hybrid. To me, this was a terrifying distraction when you got to the younger characters. I had literally zero connection to TINY TIM, instead... my connection was forged through Gary Oldman's Bob Cratchit and Carrey's Scrooge. The three ghosts of CHRISTMAS' past, present and future are pretty damn spectacular.... as are how they show Scrooge his past, present and future. The best of the Ghosts in my opinion was the Ghost of Christmas Present. Jesus god, what a nightmare of a jovial spirit. The laugh, the look on his face... how his face continually aged through the sequence unto the character's own death at the striking of Christmas' midnight. Everything about that character... how he took Scrooge on his journey... it was magical, beautiful and like nothing I'd ever seen before. I found the script exemplary. Written for the screen by Robert Zemeckis himself, and it is perhaps the most literate telling of A CHRISTMAS CAROL that I've seen... That said... A CHRISTMAS CAROL is a most human of stories to me. My top three favorite Scrooges were Alastair Sim's 1951 SCROOGE, that mid-80's George C Scott portrayal for television and lastly Albert Finney's performance in SCROOGE (1970). I also love Scrooge McDuck's portrayal in MICKEY'S CHRISTMAS CAROL along with Michael Caine's Scrooge in THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL. So where does Jim Carrey and the performance capture lay? Well, frankly... it is amongst the very best. I guarantee that had Jim Carrey gone through the BENJAMIN BUTTONS process like Brad Pitt.... and had this film been made that way - we'd all uniformly be talking about this being an Academy Award worthy performance. The Scrooge character in the film looks quite amazing - but it is just a bit lacking. It just doesn't come to life like that. God, I would kill to see the money put on screen here, but with the ambition of making it look real. To me, the "Performance Capture" medium should be used incorporation with every other technique out there... especially live action. The fact is that in this medium - animators are king. This medium is about exaggeration, stillness and subtlety. But you compare the "performance" of Tiny Tim's face in this - then compare it to the "performance" of Russell in Pixar's UP - and you'll get what I'm talking about. For example... Scrooge's body and costume design were absolutely fantastic... But as he crept along the cobblestone streets for his fateful meeting with his ol' partner... while creepy, I found myself wanting that character to move with more gravity, as though life was oppressive to him. That's one of those things that animators can do in animation, that performance capture merely renders as a normal motion, not an extraordinary motion. I'm hoping on Spielberg and Peter Jackson's TINTIN that they'll play with the medium and allow WETA's animators to enhance the performance capture beyond its human limitations. I know that's an awful lot of criticism for a positive review, but the story is so well done, the voice work and the overall look is unique enough, while not entirely satisfactory - that I can't help but love it. ESPECIALLY due to the stunningly wonderful score by Alan Silvestri which made me want to go caroling immediately after. Like I said, the movie made me want to rush home to my wife and cuddle and watch something poignant. Something sublimely genius. So we put UHF on the Netflix Instant Queue - a film she'd never seen and we laughed and laughed and had such a jolly good time. After all, it isn't the money you have, but the joy you share that makes for a good life. That message comes through loud and clear. The reason to go is that this is a tremendously entertaining and viscerally dynamic telling of A CHRISTMAS CAROL that has atmosphere, scares and solid performances throughout. And one of the great Alan Silvestri scores. I will be seeing this again, but at a regular 3D screen, as I found the glasses at the local IMAX to be a bummer, and I had slight ghosting problems throughout. Hoping that clears up via digital at the 4K Digitals they have at the Drafthouse.