On the plus side: Robert Zemeckis's new movie stays faithful to the original, although I'm not sure that all that Dickensian moralising has much appeal in the 21st Century. That's not the fault of Dickens, of course. The spirit of Marley is well done; quite scary. The spirit horse's head emerging from the the shadows on the wall is effective; maybe the most effective image or scene in the entire movie. the snow was quite well-realised in 3D as were the (too many) scenes of characters observed through glass. Neither is a strong enough justification of 3D.On the negative side: it's long and tedious at times. There's much too much whooshing through the air (a bit reminiscent of The Snowman): whoosh over the roof tops of London (several times); whoosh through the trees of Christmas past; whoosh down the drains and across icicle-strewn tiled roofs during the rather ridiculous shrunk-Scrooge sequence; whoosh to the graveyard of Christmas yet to come. Robin Wright Penn, Bob Hoskins and Colin Firth were under-used.
Ho hum. Well-intentioned but thoroughly unnecessary. I don't think the world really needs a new Christmas Carol. If we must have one, it ought to have been more engaging than this.
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