Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 23: ‘A Christmas Carol’
Some say the Christmas season is the most wonderful time of year, but there’s at least one person who would disagree: Ebenezer Scrooge, that old skinflint from Charles Dickens’ classic tale, A Christmas Carol. This week’s Mousterpiece Cinema kicks off December by looking at the most recent adaptation of this story, from Walt Disney Pictures and Robert Zemeckis. Is Jim Carrey a great Scrooge? Does motion-capture animation work better here than in The Polar Express or Beowulf? What does Keystone Light beer have to do with any of this? Take a listen to an all-new Mousterpiece Cinema to find out!
Josh isn't just a Disney buff, a film buff, or a TV buff. He's a pop-culture obsessive, through and through. His long journey began in Western New York and has taken him to the American Southwest, where he resides with his wife and six--count 'em, six--cats. His favorite Disney movie (non-Pixar) is Beauty and the Beast, but his favorite Pixar movie is Ratatouille, and he thinks the latter is at least five times better than the former. 
A quite thorough and accurate review. I was disappointed with this adaptation as well, especially the preposterous and overly long chase sequence following the ghost of Christmas past. If only they’d taken that time and reinvested it into better developing Bob Cratchit and his family. There was very little emotional resonance at the end with tiny Tim because they got so little screen time.
I did feel that Jim Carrey’s voice work as Mr. Scrooge was mostly excellent. He was up to the task, but the rest of the cast felt largely underutilized. It also became rather obvious that the bulk of the character animation computer power was invested primarily in Scrooge himself and the totally unnecessary flying/chasing sequences. Most everyone else suffered from unnatural looking rigidity and lacking texture detail.