While for some there is something disconcerting about the lifeless eyes of the otherwise life like characters, it certainly lends itself to large 3D cinemas, with rubber faced characters and grand sweeping movement.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 6, 2018

The biggest surprise is that Zemeckis, so often in thrall to his digital palette, here uses it to freshly illuminate a time-honored text.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 16, 2011

The greatest tension in this adaptation of A Christmas Carol isn't between Scrooge and those pesky ghosts but within writer-director Robert Zemeckis.

| Nov 12, 2009

How they made it into this Disney adaptation unprettified is a Christmas miracle in itself.

| Nov 6, 2009

Zemeckis' film preserves much of Dickens' original dialogue and detail while amplifying the utter ethereal strangeness of the ghosts.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 6, 2009

There's a lot of dark magic in this Dickensian Yuletide.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 6, 2009

Want the creeps for Christmas? Then check out the latest version of A Christmas Carol.

| Original Score: C | Nov 6, 2009

Does this entertainment achieve a timelessness beyond its exquisite source material? Not even. Yet there's pleasure to be had and relief in feeling the filmmakers didn't Scrooge it up either.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 6, 2009

Zemeckis captures all the story's terror, but its pathos has always been the real challenge, and it mostly eludes him.

| Nov 6, 2009

You don't identify with Scrooge at any point, nor is blatant fakery scary. Picture The Seventh Seal with sock puppets.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 6, 2009

A branded piece of shiny seasonal entertainment.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 6, 2009

A splendidly mounted and visually imaginative animated 3D version of the classic novel.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 6, 2009

Cinematographer Robert Presley and the design team provide many instances of graphical triumph, influenced by silent cinema.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 6, 2009

A Christmas Carol should be as cosy and familiar as piping-hot tea and buttered, toasted crumpets, not a brain-battering sensory assault that feels like downing tequila shots on a rollercoaster.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 6, 2009

There is a weird lack of passion here, almost condescension, a sense that Scrooge's agonised moral journey into his past is potentially pretty dull, and so Zemeckis is always livening things up by whooshing the old miser excitingly through the night sky.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 6, 2009

It's a heartwarmer that doesn't have much of a heart itself.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 6, 2009

Disney's excessively hyped A Christmas Carol revels so richly in bringing the Dickensian details to sumptuous life that you wind up forgiving it for possessing a stop-motion soul.

| Nov 6, 2009

It's like taking a Christmas wreath and dipping it in wax or laminating a Christmas card in plastic. Zemeckis risks creating another Yule ghoul: the Ghost of Christmas Without Soul.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 6, 2009

As the lead character, Carrey's CG-created body is spindly and bent, and he has fun with his vocal performance, turning every word into a strangled hiss.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 6, 2009

The story is robust enough to survive the theme-park treatment, and for the most part it's a very good ride, with a welcome note of actual Christmas caroling spirit.

| Original Score: B | Nov 6, 2009