A Christmas Carol: The Scariest Cartoon You’ll Ever See

As some of you twitterheads and facebook peeps know, I took some kids from school on a field trip to see Disney’s A Christmas Carol last week. This version of Christmas Carol is directed by Robert Zemeckis, the madman that brought us Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump and Castaway. As of late he’s been known as the madman that brought us The Polar Express and Beowulf. It’s almost as if since 2000 Zemeckis has decided that he is the one that is going to usher in a new age of film-making. These slightly creepy realistically animated movies seem to be the only thing that Zemeckis is interested in now.

I think the majority of us will admit that it’s strange to watch a movie in ‘Zemeckiscope’, a term that I give Timmy Wood credit for. One of my friends claimed that watching a Zemeckis cartoon is like watching corpse puppets. They look like humans but there’s something eerily non-living about them. Sometimes I feel like I’m watching cloned actors. Every now and then there is something really strange about the eyes of the cartoons, I honestly believe that I can peer into the character and see that it has no soul. I think that it’s off putting for the majority of viewers because the animation is so good and at times you feel as if you’re watching a real movie not a cartoon. In other words, these meat puppets be scary at times.

As a quick disclaimer, I think that Zemeckis is a forerunner and if he’s lucky he’ll master this niche of film making. Or unfortunately, he’ll be the other type of forerunner. The one that is misunderstood and thought of as a fool. The guy that takes a beating for introducing something too early for popular consumption. He’ll either be a mad-genuis or a martyr, only time will tell.

Now on top of all of this, I was with a group of children. You know, what the group of people we would assume would be the target audience for Disney’s A Christmas Carol. I don’t know when Disney started making movies for adults because this movie is NOT for children. I repeat do not take children to this movie. They will cry.

I thought the movie was decent. Jim Carrey was pretty good and deserves some credit for his work in this animated film. Gary Oldman found another way to make himself unrecognizable. Oldman might actually deserve an award for acting in a cartoon. The performances were pretty good but in the end my main problem with the movie was the same I had with the animated characters: they both lacked soul. It was hard to really get emotionally involved in this movie and in the end you should feel the change of Scrooge not just see it. I thought it was a solid attempt and decent but not memorable unless you want to see obese animated Carey Elwes…