November’s only just begun, but for many people, that automatically means it’s already the holiday season. For those folks, Disney Plus has just added a festive movie that’s often overlooked, as amongst the haul coming to the Mouse House’s streaming service today is 2009’s A Christmas Carol, an adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic starring Jim Carrey as the infamously curmudgeonly Ebenezer Scrooge.
As directed by Robert Zemeckis, A Christmas Carol was the third of a kind of trilogy of movies made by the Back to the Future director where he employed what was then state of the art motion capture tech to bring the film to life. Following on from 2004’s The Polar Express and 2007’s Beowulf, the pic makes use of the animation style to allow Carrey to play multiple roles. Not only is he Scrooge, but he also performs all three of the ghosts that haunt the old miser on Christmas Eve.
The actor is joined by a few big names as well who each also doubled, or sometimes tripled, up to fill out the rest of the roles. These include Gary Oldman (Bob Cratchitt, Jacob Marley, the mo-cap for Tiny Tim), Colin Firth (Fred), Bob Hoskins (Mr. Fezziwig, Old Joe) and – in a fun Princess Bride reunion – Robin Wright and Cary Elwes, who each play a few minor characters apiece. Elwes also stood in for Carrey when he had to act opposite another of his parts.
Like all of Zemeckis’ mo-cap films, A Christmas Carol turned out to be a pretty divisive effort – many folks find the animation style a little creepy – but it got a lot of plaudits for its incredible technical achievements and Carrey’s spirited four-fold performance, which is very enjoyable to watch. Plus, it tells the most mythical Christmas story of all time, so it’s definitely one to flip on to get you in the yuletide mood. And you can find it on Disney Plus right now.
Published: Nov 6, 2020 10:22 am