Monday 29 November 2010

CHRISTMAS MOVIES!!! Half Arsed Review: Disney's A Christmas Carol

Last year I put up my thoughts on a selection of Horror Films around Halloween time, so this year, as I've nothing better to do with my time, I'm putting up my thoughts on a selection of Christmas movies.

Today's entry is "Disney's A Christmas Carol" which is the CGI adventures of one Ebenezer Scrooge AKA Jim Carrey.

The first thing I've got to say about this film is the graphics are amazing. Not quite Avatar, but they're really impressive, the characters look like the actors (in most cases) and at points (maybe due to me having lost my glasses) in the darker lit parts of the film I could have sworn that they were real actors. On the flip side of this was the party scene where Mr. and Mrs. Fezzywig did a dance that was physically impossible destroying the realism the rest of the film so far had built up and reminded you you were watching a modern day cartoon. Poor move Disney.

Lighting in this film was a bit of a problem for me and all of my family agreed that when Scrooge was knocking about at the beginning, there were parts you didn't know what was going on thanks to the screen being near pitch black. Sure it saved a bit of money for the studio, as nothing was happening, but it spoilt the first part of the film as I wasn't sure what I was looking at.

The horror element from the story was higher than I had expected, due to this being Disney and all, but really added to the whole atmosphere and the characters were all faithfully recreated in this adaptation.

There was a chase scene near the end that was entirely pointless and I fear that 3D was the culprit. It detracted from the story as there seemed no reason why Scrooge would run away from the ghost of Christmas yet to come, but because they wanted to charge people an extra few quid at the cinema, they added it. Another poor move from Disney.

If you want to watch a pretty faithful (except said chase) adaptation of A Christmas Carol, this is a great film. It's more adult than I imagined and think younger children could get bored. However for me, if you want to watch A Christmas Carol, even though I love Jim Carrey, I'd have to say you need to watch A Muppet's Christmas Carol, which I will talk about in more detail in a later update.

So, I'd give this 3 out of 5 baubles. It would be 4, but the chase scene and Fezzywig party really detracted from the overall atmosphere.

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