5:05:40 PM Tara Ariano: Somehow, I managed to become the only English major ever to get a degree without reading a word Charles Dickens ever wrote, but the critics say that Robert Zemeckis's adaptation is extremely faithful to the original text, so I guess I believe them.
5:06:06 PM Will Edmondson: Well, I wasn't an English major, but I've read a bunch of Dickens, because I'm a man of culture. But, I didn't remember much of "A Christmas Carol" until I saw the movie. I remembered a lot of it through the movie, so I'd say that it was pretty faithful. That doesn't change the fact that this movie probably had no business getting made, though.
5:08:01 PM Tara Ariano: I absolutely agree. Whether or not this was the most faithful adaptation ever, did I want to see it creepily animated or with Jim Carrey doing half the voices? In fact, I did not.

5:10:08 PM Will Edmondson: I mean, if I'm in the mood for "A Christmas Carol," I'm going to 1. "A Muppet Christmas Carol," 2. "Mickey's Christmas Carol," and even though I've never seen it, 3. "Scrooged," because I love Bill Murray.
5:10:22 PM Tara Ariano: "Scrooged" is great. Everyone should see it.
5:11:13 PM Will Edmondson: And, this isn't even the first "A Christmas Carol" adaptation we've seen this year, because of that absolute pile of crap "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past."
5:11:44 PM Tara Ariano: Yes, because the only time it's less annoying to watch a Christmas movie than the first week of November is...in May. But the point is: this is well-worn material. You don't have to have read the text to know the story because it's been used in pop culture sooooo many times. Maybe assiduous faithfulness to Dickens is what Zemeckis's movie brings to the table, but that's not enough.
5:14:05 PM Will Edmondson: There are a few things that this movie did well, though, and that we should give it credit for. First, the animation (of non-living things) was incredible, and the 3D effects were the best I'd seen this year. (Note: I heard "Up" was good in 3D, but I saw it in 2D.) When the people were animated, though, it got a little weird, because it reached that weird "very lifelike, but not lifelike enough" plateau that just makes everything look like an actor wearing a prosthetic face...and then flying through the air on a candle snuffer just to remind you that it's animated.
5:15:51 PM Tara Ariano: Sure. The big complaint everyone had about "The Polar Express," the first movie Zemeckis directed in this style, is that the characters all had those milky, weird, dead eyes. He's solved the eye problem, but ruined the rest of the characters' faces in the process, somehow. They all look misshapen and Botoxed.

5:17:29 PM Will Edmondson: It also did a very good job with the non-Jim Carrey roles; I thought the Cratchit family was very good, in particular.
5:18:00 PM Tara Ariano: Gary Oldman can't NOT do a good job, even when his role is being performed by a deformed little avatar.
5:19:16 PM Will Edmondson: And I'm glad that they finally talked a little bit about how Jacob Marley was a bad dude, too, and wants to warn Scrooge about the errors in his ways so that he doesn't share Marley's fate, before just jumping into the ghost parts. That was well done.
5:20:49 PM Tara Ariano: And that's after they established that Marley DID give to the local businessmen's charity when he was alive; not enough to save him from all those chains and weights. So Scrooge was probably due to spend his afterlife lugging around anvils if he didn't turn things around in a big way.
5:22:57 PM Will Edmondson: The biggest problem I had with this movie -- and as a huge "Ace Ventura," "Dumb and Dumber," and "The Mask" fan it pains me to say this -- was Jim Carrey. His Scrooge voice sounded like a poor attempt at Mike Myers's "Fat Bastard" voice, his face was everywhere for no apparent reason, and at best he was annoying, at worst painful.

5:24:59 PM Tara Ariano: Carrey also played the first two Ghosts (and maybe the third, though that one doesn't talk) -- which makes sense in a way, because they're supposed to be manifestations of his subconscious and so on, but is also annoying because of the ways Carrey tries to inject character into them. What's with the Ghost of Christmas Past's weird, breathy voice (with Irish accent)? Why does the Ghost of Christmas Present have such a broad Yorkshireman thing going on? SETTLE DOWN.
5:27:46 PM Will Edmondson: Right, yes, as a literary metaphor, they have to be "parts of Scrooge's subconscious." Sure. But those ghosts had NOTHING to do with Ebenezer Scrooge. The Ghost of Christmas Past looked like that weird baby sun thing from "The Teletubbies," and talked in like the old guy child molester from "Family Guy."

5:28:44 PM Will Edmondson: The Ghost of Christmas Present looked like The Burger King. They weren't part of Scrooge's character. As you said, they seemed to be Jim Carrey trying to act like he thought the ghosts should act, and ending up just being weird.
5:32:35 PM Tara Ariano: Well, if there's one thing we know about Jim Carrey, it's that he doesn't do anything by half-measures. He was acting his limbs off.
5:33:43 PM Will Edmondson: The overacting just added to the problem that the movie had for having such an overplayed story: It dragged the story on a lot longer than it needed to, especially because you already knew how every scene was going to end.
5:34:34 PM Tara Ariano: The one and only thing I thought was notably well done was the way they animated the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, which was genuinely creepy...until that scene turned into a horse-and-carriage race for no good reason.
5:36:13 PM Will Edmondson: Well, you have to pay for that extra 3D surcharge somehow, Tara.
5:37:42 PM Tara Ariano: Yeah, other than the casting of Jim Carrey, my biggest problem with the movie was that it was animated. There would be long stretches where nothing was happening that couldn't have been accomplished with live human actors plus CGI effects, and just when you forgot it even WAS animated, a character would suddenly do something a human COULDN'T do, to distract you and make it seem like they were proving why Robert Zemeckis DIDN'T just do a live-action movie, other than that, I assume, he doesn't want to interact with people anymore.
5:39:13 PM Will Edmondson: Sometimes I think directors get enamored with technology, and just like to see what it can do. (See you in December, James Cameron and "Avatar"!) What's next week?
5:39:23 PM Tara Ariano: I think you know.

5:39:41 PM Will Edmondson: I was hoping that they pushed up the release of "Sherlock Holmes."
5:40:05 PM Tara Ariano: You hoped in vain. "2012" opened today, and there's no reason to think it won't be #1 this weekend.
5:40:45 PM Will Edmondson: I'm going to TRY to fall asleep in that movie.
5:41:10 PM Tara Ariano: You're going to have a hard time with all my cackling.
5:41:25 PM Will Edmondson: Wait, it's a comedy?
5:41:37 PM Tara Ariano: I think it will be for us.
5:42:34 PM Will Edmondson: I'm not expecting to laugh, but I just hope that there's a ton of computer-generated catastrophes, and not much acting.
5:42:46 PM Tara Ariano: THAT hope will probably be fulfilled.