A Christimas Carol: A grand shallow spectacle?

Christmas is upon us, and it's that time of the year when the big hollywood studios unleash all their magical films, most of them aimed to please all the young audiences. One of the most beloved and successful of those films has to be the adaptation of Charles Dickens novel “A Christmas Carol”. The story of a miserly and cruel man with no heart has fascinated people of all ages, and it's been translated to the big screen many times, the most remembered by kids being Mickey's Christmas Carol, which told the story using traditional characters from the Disney universe like Mickey Mouse, Scrooge McDuck, Goofy or Daisy Duck.

Robert Zemeckis, director of some of the most inventive and heart touching movies of all time, like “Who framed Roger Rabbit”, “Forrest Gump” or “Back to the future”, brings us his own reinterpretation of the classic, using the revolutionary motion capture technique. This filming method , which he has explored to moderate success in his previous films (“The Polar Express” and “Beowulf”), uses a series of devices on the body of the actors which gather data about their facial movements, as well as body movement and gestures. All the information is sent to a computer and after a long and complicated treatment, the data is transformed into 3D images.

Even if Zemeckis has spent many years developing this technique, most of the critics aren't satisfied with the results. They all agree that the movie is a feast for the eyes; the views of London are spectacular and the detail is exquisite, but the bottom line is: there is no soul. Zemeckis, as they say, has tried so hard to make images as real as possible that he has forgotten to let the emotion flow. We don't feel the characters, and the experience, even if exhilarating, leaves us cold. There is also a big problem with the eyes, which was the main concern with “Polar Express” and “Beowulf”. You can't install devices on the eyes of the actors, so you have to recreate them in a computer. A person can communicate multiple emotions trough their eyes, but in “A Christmas Carol” they aren't real, they don't make us feel anything. An animated character looks at you and you feel nothing.

Greatly done but emotionally shallow they say, but as always, the public is the one who decides. In theaters everywhere now.