A Christmas Carol

This is the perfect collaboration: Charles Dickens ("Nicholas Nickleby"), who never used four words when ten would do (he was paid by the column inch); and Robert Zemeckis ("The Polar Express"), who never met a Computer Generated Image he didn't like. This means that children will see a fully developed version of Dickens' book but some of the scenes are too scary for the little 'uns.

Zemeckis' homage to Dickens includes the use of some of the actual dialogue from the original book and he clearly relishes the opportunity to simulate the special effects that Dickens described in this, his only classic ghost story.

Jim Carrey ("The Truman Show") has proven himself to be a highly capable voice artist in his depiction of Scrooge and some of the ghosts, but I was dismayed to realize that I have become a "microwave person." I found myself longing for the remote so I could zap through the endless flights over mid-1800s London and the overblown ghostly scenes; sorta like skimming over some of Dickens' more verbose passages. How embarrassing...

The artwork is brilliant; the CGI is awesome; and the ghost story is exactly that: a ghost story. So what did I think I was going to see? Despite the rave reviews, I'm afraid I found it tedious.