Disney's A Christmas Carol

Seen at: Metrolux 14 in Loveleand, at 2:00 p.m. on Jan. 7.

It was such a beautiful sunny day today on the front range---only contrails and no chemtrails as far as the eye could see. It seemed like an utter shame to waste the chance to soak up some Vitamin D by ducking inside a theater in mid afternoon.

It was the last possible day I could see it, and the last showing in the area. It was now or never. Was it worth wasting a sunny afternoon?

On some level, yes. The technical animation was interesting at times, and I find myself wishing I could have seen it in 3-D, just out of curiosity. My bad. From now on, I'm going to see 3-D movies in 3-D, I've decided.

On the other hand, I'm glad I didn't see this in the Christmas season. As a Christmas story, and moreover as a Dickens adaptation, it utterly fails. It sacrifices Christmas spirit in favor of creating an interesting ghost story (which is what generates all the interesting 3-D stuff). In that regard, it felt more like an adaptation of Disney's Haunted Mansion concept than anything else.

I can't in my wildest dreams imagine anyone, who has seen many adaptations of this story, say with a straight face, "This was one of the better ones." In fact I'm having trouble thinking of any that I would put lower than this. There are too many things in this movie that are just plain wrong, with classical "fail" written on them (for example, the wretchedly stupid "death" of the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the pointless chase-by-demonic-carraige at the beginning of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come sequence..

There was very little emotional release at the end, which just seemed to peter out, rather than giving a satisfactory salvation feeling for Scrooge. I guess there wasn't room for that, giving all the ghosty stuff that had to be crammed in.

I would close this with "bah, humbug," but in the lingering Christmas spirit, I'm going to give this movie an award it probably deserves:

Best sound effects editing: Disney's A Christmas Carol.

This latter element was by far and away the strength of the entire production, without which it would have been barely interesting.