A Christmas Carol 2009 Review

Disney fans I don't know if you've noticed this but it's nearly Christmas I know it's hard to believe what with all the promotion in shops as well as various shopping companies releasing there yearly Christmas adverts and so in order to get you into the Christmas mood here is my review of the companies third adaptation of this classic novel A Christmas Carol.

Honestly this is one of the easiest things i've ever had to write because I don't need to summarize the plot to A Christmas Carol because the book has been adapted that many times everyone knows the plot of it by heart but I can say that the story is still effective in this film the only real issue I have with the films story is that it's pacing is so bad the film feels way slower then what it is and that's not a good thing in any film regardless of the length.

As you can see by the poster the film does star Jim Carrey as Scrooge and all three of the ghosts but it also stars Gary Oldman as Bob Cratchit and Jacob Marley , Colin Firth as Fred Holywell , Bob Hoskins as Mr. Fezziwig and Old Joe , Robin Wright as Fran and Ryan Ochoa as Tiny Tim. I have to say bravo to Jim for playing four different characters in the same movie that takes alot of skill for any actor to pull of and not only does he do it he also manages to turn in a great performance. 

The rest of the cast I thought were really good you always expect a great performance from Gary Oldman because he's freaking Gary Oldman the guy can turn in a great performance in his sleep but I admit I wasn't expecting a good performance from Colin just because he's one of those actors where you never know what kind of performance he'll give so you there for have no idea if he'll be good in the film or not.

Now even tho this film was released under the Disney banner they didn't actually produce the animation for the film that was done by Image Movers Digital a company that was formed in 2007 and closed it's doors in 2010 and I have to say that's a shame because the animation quality in this film is really top notch infact one of the things that the film got praise for was it's animation and it's not hard to see why since there is a lot of fluid movement from the characters and there's alot of detail not only in the background but also in the character design.

Incase your interested the company that IMD spawned from ImageMovers is still going in fact every film that director Robert Zemeckis of Back To The Future fame works on as either a director or producer are released by this company and since the company now has a deal with Universal Pictures they could technically make either a Back To The Future sequel or a remake but let's be real the chances of there being either happening to that franchise are slim at best.

One of the many criticisms this film got was that it was to dark and to that i have to say yeah that's the point it's a dark story Scrooge has to learn to love Christmas and be a better person and because he's so reluctant to do so the ghosts do have to be scary and if your one of those people that think that kids films shouldn't be scary let me remind you that alot of kids films have scary imagery in them and alot of them have a really dark story to match it.

I don't know if the film got criticized for this or not but for me this film can at times be rather boring and that's a shame because i've seen quite a few versions of this story and it can be really entertaining so it made me a little bit sad to see a version of it that is just so dull even tho there's a lot of creative imagery being shown all of it meant nothing because of the fact that I constantly checking to see how long was left or even getting ready for this review.

Like I said at the start of the review this is the third version of the story done by Disney with what some would consider the best version being the one by The Muppets (yes I'm thinking of reviewing it) but for me at least this version is very underrated because of the fact that it keeps the dark undertones of the book where as with the muppets version even when they do those dark moments your still laughing because it's The Muppets.

For some reason whenever Disney do a version of this story they always cast really great actors in this film they had Micheal Cane play Scrooge in The Muppets version and you've seen the cast list for this film it's a great list of actors so I have to ask apart from the fact it's based of a story from one of England's greatest ever writers in Sir Charles Dickens because character wise the characters are very one note and everything is very black and white.

To stick with tradition the music for this film is done by Back To The Future composer Alan Silvestri and as is normal for him the score for the film is really good I will say that it's not as good as his scores for lets say Back To The Future or Avengers Assemble (yes i'm from the UK get over it) but it's still a really decent score.

Overall this is a pretty decent effort it's not the best version of the story infact far freaking from it but it does a fairly solid job of telling the story and it has great acting and animation and so this gets a 6.5 out of 10 from me.