Iteration after iteration, conceding that the best way to go about this piece is in a classic adaptation, Robert Zemeckis finally gets the chance to show what he failed to do in Beowulf. A Jim Carrey-led A Christmas Carol adaptation under the Disney flagship should have no right to be as horrifying as this. Yet it is, and Carrey, along with a tremendous accent and a cast worth killing for, is on hand to deliver a very formal yet understandable rendition of Charles Dickens’ work. It is a fabled classic and one that has been adapted more times than the actual number of pages to that original piece of work. That’s if Google is to be believed, anyway. If it is to be believed, then it is great routine and consistency that sees A Christmas Carol adapt genuine horror for a young generation.
Zemeckis’ firm hand here is integral to managing a piece that does enough to scare and enough to engage a younger audience. A Christmas Carol strikes its balance between themes more typically adult than most, the hauntings of a Victorian mansion and the greed of lead Ebeneezer Scrooge (Carrey) with the acceptability of it being targeted toward the more family-oriented audience. It is a feature that engages with its moody aesthetics and its well-aged animation with the same fear and tenacity as that of those old nostalgic pieces that scared children years before. Everyone has their own sense of fear touching a piece of film or art that has no need to be feared. Luigi’s Mansion is a ridiculous yet truthful example. So too is A Christmas Carol, a piece that strikes intensity with its storytelling brilliance.
From snapping jaws of ghostly apparitions voiced by Gary Oldman to the incredible turn of form from Carrey, whose presence here as Scrooge is one of the character’s greatest outings, A Christmas Carol strikes with a stunning uniqueness. It captures the fundamental fear of the original text but does well to note that change can happen to even the most damned and doomed of gluttonous souls. There is a sense within A Christmas Carol that striking through with making a grand and needed change is what it takes to live a fulfilled life. That was the message then and it is the message for this piece too. There are great transitions throughout this Zemeckis piece, it is where the true form of cementing the past and future as a travel through time is best explained.
Children are meant to be scared by their entertainment. A Christmas Carol is a perfect, modern example of how the animated form can embed something subconsciously, for the good of a generation engaging with a great text. Correctly gauging the Christmas whimsy with incredible understanding of how rotten the pursuit of substance is, A Christmas Carol is tender and well moulded. It is also as accurate as it can be to the remarkable words Dickens conjured up, the imagery he created and the criticism he laid onto the depictions of greed, ignorance and want. It is rather telling that A Christmas Carol still resonates with firm and frightful accuracy.
