Saturday November 14, 2009
True spirits of Christmas
Review by AMY DE KANTER
It was not long before I realised that for this review I would be eating Christmas crow. With stuffing. I had gone into this film feeling decidedly Scroogey.
First of all, not another Christmas Carol. It has been done to death, in a million forms, including Disney’s Scrooge McDuck, last year’s performance at Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLpac) and countless TV specials. Like Charles Dickens’ ghosts, multiple versions of A Christmas Carol haunt our past, present and future.
In addition to this, I am no longer impressed by people playing multiple roles in the movies. Yes, we know that Jim Carrey, like Robin Williams or Martin Lawrence, can put on piles of make-up and pretend to be someone else. Big deal. By now it just feels like the producers are too cheap to invest in extra actors.
And it was directed by Robert Zemeckis, who after such wonderful experimentation in special effects with Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Back To The Future and Forrest Gump, sucked the life-spark out of The Polar Express and Beowulf.
Jim Carrey plays the voice of, among others, Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Finally, the one good experience I had with 3D was more than 20 years ago. Since then, most films have no effects-worthy things leaping out at you. Just as well, since the last time I tried on the glasses there was some sort of technical difficulty that had all of us squinting at double lines.
The audience left annoyed, with nausea and a splitting headache.
A 3D Christmas Carol? Bah, humbug. Pass the crow, please. This is one great movie, destined to become a Christmas classic. Instead of trying to be young and cool and clever as I had feared, it recognises the beauty of, and stays true to, Dickens’ most universally beloved story. And more importantly, to Dickens’ timeless dialogue.
Despite his wealth, Ebenezer Scrooge is a vile penny pincher. He forces his only employee to work at tiny wages in a freezing cold office while he keeps coal for the stove under lock and key.
He tells his nephew Fred (Colin Firth), “What reason have you got to be merry? You’re poor enough.” To which Fred cheerily retorts: “What reason have you got to be miserable? You’re rich enough.”
When two men collecting for charity tell Scrooge of the terrible conditions of the poor in London, he growls, “If they’d rather die, then they had better do it and decrease the surplus population.”
In short, a lovely man.
He hates Christmas (“every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”) because he resents a day in which no one works. He hates Sundays too.
On Christmas Eve, Scrooge returns to his cold, dark house and is visited by the ghost of his old business partner, Jacob Marley (Gary Oldman). Marley’s ghost draws heavy chains, one link for each one of his cruel acts in life. Scrooge’s chains, he warns, were just as long when Marley died seven years ago. Over the years they have become much longer and heavier.
Although Scrooge initially tries to blame his vision on indigestion (“There’s more of gravy than of grave about you.”) the ghost is too frighteningly real to be dismissed. Marley has come to warn Scrooge to expect three visitors that night, three spirits of Christmas (CarreyX3) who will come to take Scrooge on a journey to his past, present and future, which as we all know, become tough love teachers for change.
Carrey is wonderful in the role of the mean and miserly Ebenezer and as the Christmas spirits who visit him. His jolly spirit of Christmas present is unforgettable.
The 3D effects are incredible. No, I’m not a convert yet. We still have a ways to go. I switched seats four times before finding that 3D works best close to the screen. The 3D glasses, no longer the cardboard ones but hefty plastic ones (with an equally hefty fine if you should break or lose them), increase the intensity of any other lights, including the row numbers.
You can do something about that by avoiding the aisle seats, but the exit sign next to the screen was a glaring red distraction.
The 3D effect worked wonders for Scrooge’s bony features and added terror to the shadow spirit of Christmas Yet to Come, but was less kind to lesser characters, making them ridiculously bulgy caricatures, seemingly made of rubber. Tiny Tim’s (Oldman) eyes were so huge they looked worryingly unnatural on someone merely supposed to be cute.
Still, the effects were magical and the wonderful soundtrack will likely make as much money as the film (which I guarantee most people will watch again and again). The outdoor scenes with falling snow, the hovering perspectives, a silly but forgivable chase scene, and most of all the trips with the spirits keeps the audience in permanent awe.
I’ve always believed that in 3D films flying sequences should be mandatory. A Christmas Carol has you soaring.
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