PG • 96 mins • 4 November

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Cast: Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins, Robin Wright Penn

Rating:

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is like Shelley’s Frankenstein or Stoker’s Dracula: so ingrained in universal consciousness that any new interpretation of the tale needs to offer that bit extra, a little something to freshen up the well-worn dramatics.

Disney’s new take on the material is all about its dazzling 3D motion-capture, zipping the 19th century novella into the 21st – and how (although it retains a good deal of the original’s dialogue).

A quick plot recap for those new to the planet: miserly Ebeneezer Scrooge is visited by four ghosts (yep, four, not three – don’t forget Marley’s ghost, pub quiz fans) who show him his past, present and future in an effort to make him mend his penurious ways. Jim Carrey “plays” most of these parts, and here’s where the “hmmms” start coming in: you’d think that with Carrey around there’d be big laughs throughout. There aren’t. A couple of chuckles, but little more.

Further raising the question of exactly who this film is aimed at, it’s blooming scary for youngsters – several intense scenes must have meant this was a whisker away from getting a 12A. Gorgeous, enrapturing 3D visions of a chocolate-box Victorian London and a heartwarming finale add some glittering tinsel, but it’s the terrifying ghoulies that’ll stay with the younglings into the night.

Robert Zemeckis has given us some of the most engaging fantasy films of the last 25 years, but one thing A Christmas Carol doesn’t have is the same level of engagement as, say, the Back To The Future films. Trying to work out why isn’t easy: maybe the animation detaches us from the characters? Maybe some of the action sequences are more suited to a Universal Studios theme park ride than a movie? Maybe it’s that lack of humour? Whatever, the film isn’t quite the triumph it might have been. But it is an experience, being stunning to look at – and you’ll only get the full effect from seeing it on the big screen, rather than waiting for the DVD.

Russell Lewin