This isn't the first time this familiar story of a grumpy miser's ghostly redemption has been seen on screen. You could argue there is little more to be added to a yarn that has been adapted so many times, not least by this version's producer Disney (see Mickey's Christmas Carol and The Muppet Christmas Carol).
Only this summer we had Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, a Matthew McConaughey rom-com that, like Bill Murray's Scrooged before it, relocated the plot to the present day. You do have to ask, then, what Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis hopes to bring to a tale that's now as predictable as turkey leftovers and the Queen's Christmas Day message.
What Zemeckis does is go back to the past and the core values of this seasonal heart-warmer. Yes, he does up the ante somewhat with fast-paced action scenes which see Ebenezer Scrooge shot to the moon, shrunk like Alice and flown around like the kid in The Snowman. The essence of his transformation remains unaltered, however, Jim Carrey's alter-ego going from sour-faced curmudgeon to avuncular old duffer just like Alistair Sim, Albert Finney and Sir Michael Caine before him.
Using the same motion-capture gimmickry he used in The Polar Express and Beowulf, Zemeckis has yet to locate a solution to the dead-eyed, plastic-looking immobility that tends to afflict the faces of characters rendered in this format. Carrey, however, makes sure his Scrooge is animated in every other department, giving his embittered geriatric a full-bodied physicality mirrored in his myriad vocal inflections. Not only that but he also plays the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, not to mention Scrooge as a younger and middle-aged man.
Gary Oldman also multi-tasks, twinning his turn as chipper clerk Bob Cratchit with an unsettling Marley's ghost that appears in Ebenezer's bedchamber shackled to spectral money boxes. You can only admire such dexterity, though it's less successful in other areas. It's not immediately clear, for example, that Bob Hoskins' unrelated characters - ebullient host Fezziwig and foul tramp Old Joe - are separate people, particularly as the British actor makes so little attempt to differentiate them.
Colin Firth is spared that dilemma, limiting his contribution to only one appearance as Scrooge's good-natured nephew Fred. His involvement, however, like that of Oldman and Robin Wright Penn as Ebenezer's ex-sweetheart Belle, prove this is no knock-off but a painstakingly assembled, elegantly realised attempt to bring A Christmas Carol to a new generation. It might not be the most ambitious adaptation, but that's no huge failing. Indeed, one almost applauds its respect for a good story well told, virtues that are becoming increasingly rare in today's multiplexes.
A good-looking mix classic storytelling and new-fangled technology.
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