A Christmas Carol
Cast: Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Rating: 4/5
You know Christmas is just around the corner when the festive themed movies make it into cinemas and this year is no different as A Christmas Carol kicks off the Yule tide season.
A Christmas Carol has been a popular adaptation over the years but this time around we can enjoy the story in animation with, once again, some of cinema's biggest stars on hand to voice the characters.
On Christmas Eve in Victorian England, Ebenezer Scrooge, a bitter and miserly old moneylender, holds everything that embodies the joys and spirit of Christmas in contempt, refusing to visit his cheerful nephew Fred's Christmas dinner party with his family, and forcing his underpaid employee Bob Cratchit to beg to take the day off for his own family.
That night, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, who had died seven years prior on Christmas Eve and is now forced to spend his afterlife carrying heavy chains forged from his own greedy ways.
Marley warns Scrooge that he will suffer an even worse fate if he doesn't repent, and foretells that he will be haunted by three spirits that will help guide him.
It's great to see an adaptation that remains so faithful to the original story, and while it's a story that we have seen so many times before it remains just as exciting and dramatic.
The animation is beautiful and further cements this as one of the most successful film genres of 2009.
Jim Carrey brilliantly voices the central character of Scrooge who finds himself on this journey of redemption as he learns the errors of his ways and tries to change the future that waits for him.
Carrey is perfect for the central role and he really makes the character of Scrooge leap of the screen, particularly towards the end of the movie.
Zemeckis has really captured the heart of this movie it could have been so easy to go down a different path and go over the top but the tale of having a second chance and to change is well and truly at the centre of the film.
With Christmas just around the corner A Christmas Carol is a great movie that can be enjoyed by the whole family, however I must say that for some children this may be a little scary.
This movie is technically brilliant and truly beautiful to watch it's one of the best adaptation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol in many a year.
A Christmas Carol is out now.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Jim Carrey