The triumph of Christmas present

MOVIE Review

A Christmas Carol

Jim Carrey plays a fiercely cynical Ebenezer Scrooge.

Animation starring Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Bob Hoskins. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Released on IMAX 3D at Paragon and 3D projection at all theatres.

Robert Zemeckis - of Forrest Gump, The Polar Express and Beowulf - zips Charles Dickens' warm-hearted Christmas story through rollercoasting 3D animation and treats us to the glorious squalour of 1840s London with the glee of a boy with a hi-tech toy.

Zemeckis also puts the barely recognisable Jim Carrey through performance capture software, casting him as the infamous misanthrope Ebenezer Scrooge, and hurtles him through time-warped journeys that eventually help the stingy geezer find his humanity.

Hitting the right tone of the A Christmas Carol novel is nothing but a tricky task. Dickens' much-read moral story about the three ghosts who visit the avaricious Scrooge alternates between caricaturised comedy, cheeky ghost yarns, longing sadness, a dose of genuine dread, a slap in the face, all undercut with heartfelt warmth and finally, a flowering of redemption and happiness.

With technology at his disposal, Zemeckis amplifies (or writes in) Scrooge's flights of fancy that should satisfy PlayStation-addicted youngsters, and he almost overdoes the horror part when the Ghost of the Christmas Future, aka Death, materialises with his black steeds breathing fire. That scene will leave you panting, exhausted. Yet we must remember that as delightful and family-oriented as the novel is, A Christmas Carol is not exactly children's literature to begin with, and the fact that it's now adapted into an animation doesn't alter the fact that the story was intended as a cautionary tale for life-hardened adults in the first place - back in 1843.

What Zemeckis has got right, or as right as an expensive Hollywood production allows, is the tableau of poverty, the riotous yet hopeful underbelly of London that Dickens is famous for cataloguing. The scene in Bob Cratchit's household (Bob being played by an unrecognisable Gary Oldman) comes close to the image of contemporary paintings, and the sight of Tiny Tim on his little stool evokes the intimate prose of Dickens' writing that shows, with conviction, how happiness, at least during Christmas, is a matter of choice rather than fate. Which is the most important lesson that Scrooge, and we, learn from the book.

I'm still inclined to believe that most of Dickens' dialogue is better read than heard - "if they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population", as Scrooge says of the poor.

Jim Carrey, disappearing under digital skin, gives us a Scrooge that's cinematically hideous, bitter, a hard-chewing piece of human wrinkle who's surprisingly unaware of his mortality; and the actor renders his lines halfway between conscious relish and fidelity to their sources.

Carrey underplays the famous "Bah! Humbug!" to good effects. In fact if you're afraid that Carrey's buffoonery would spoil the sentimental spirit of the story, you'd be wrong, although he could have done a little more to make Scrooge a sad, lonely clown rather than just a fiercely cynical git.

I watched A Christmas Carol cladding the 3D goggles at the IMAX screen in Paragon (the film is being released only in 3D), and it was an enjoyable visual experience. Not just when we join Scrooge as he whizzes across the sky (like Astro Boy) or runs away from the charging Death's carriage, but in simple moments like when London snowflakes seem to fall on the head of the person in front of you, or when the giant goose is revealed in the Cratchit's household.

The three Ghosts of Christmas (some played by Carrey himself) are an opportunity for Zemeckis to indulge in textual interpretation and digital freewheeling; the three ghosts reflect our mental and temporal relationships with the past, present and future. We romanticise what already happened, laugh at what is happening, and dread what will, or may, happen.

It's Dickens' genius transported digitally to the 3D marvel, the past prose in the present, if not the future, perceptive experience. A Christmas Carol is usually categorised as "holiday literature", an alien concept to Thai people. Yet Dickens' book - and to a degree, this film - made me understand why a lot of people are looking forward to being merry during Christmas.

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