Christmas Carol

Robert Zemeckis went out on a limb a few years ago, when he developed a new form of movie animation, "motion-capture". It wasted Tom Hanks, by transforming his body into a soul-less dead-eyed animated zombie stuck on The Polar Express to the Christmas movie market. More talents were rendered unappealing visually by the technique for Beowulf, but Hollywood producers were impressed by Zemeckis's grosses; he got the green light for his 3-D version of A Christmas Carol.

The box-office returns for this 2009 seasonal outing were unimpressive, at less than US$140 million in North America. Let's hope motion-capture dies an overdue death.

When it's done well, the technique can be very effective, as for Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. The latest Zemeckis effort looks better than those before, mainly because anti-heroic Scrooge crinkles his eyes much of the time. Other, jollier, characters appear to be puffy-faced pop-eyed gnomes who bear ugly resemblances to their real role models (Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins). Anyone who doesn't know will need informing that Scrooge is a de-personified Jim Carrey. His English accent and gaunt body language are convincing, and he's the least wasted load of motions ever captured and twisted out of normal shape.

However, Christmas cheers should have arisen in cineplexes for the 3-D special effects. They weren't noticeably original, thrilling or any improvement on Disney or Pixar standards, but they were fun to watch while Scrooge was flown through London's skies by his guiding Ghosts. Fire and lighting animations provide colourful moments, brightly offsetting the well-crafted grimness of 19th-Century London and Scrooge's cheerless home.

A Christmas Carol is a short fable, and Zemeckis rightly filled his time with much of the original Dickensian mock-pomposity and wordy sentimentality. Less creditably, I don't recall young Scrooge's change of character being psycho-analysed and portrayed so inexplicably, and I suspect Dickens included at least one reference to Jesus's birthday and/or the Christian religion. Zemeckis doesn't, not directly, and Christians have to make do with a few crosses to remind them that Christmas Day is not simply an olde English version of Happy Thanksgiving Families Day.

Parents should be warned : children will fidget when longueurs of non-motion-capture lack any musical soundtrack to distract the audience's vacant stare. Parents may be glad that their children have been retold worthy moral lessons, and should remind the kids that Life's good intentions are often boring.