Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture-animation version of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol had a fairly blah opening weekend at the North American box office, finishing first with an unexpectedly miserly total of $31 million in ticket sales. Industry insiders had figured the film to bring in up to $45 million.
Disney studio representatives predict that this latest adaptation of the Dickens classic will do well over time, like Zemeckis’s 2004 The Polar Express. My assessment is that the biggest element limiting the film’s appeal in the prerelease period was the annoyingly frenetic and superficial quality suggested by its promotional trailers and commercials.
Jim Carrey’s noisiness appears to be wearing quite thin, and a film that features him as not only the protagonist but also three other characters sounds like far too much of a no longer good thing. Carrey would do well to follow the path of the equally obnoxious Robin Williams and move on to more serious film roles, even if it kills his career. Yes, I’m aware that Carrey’s occasional serious performances have been pretty awful, but he’s dead either way, and it would be best to die with honor instead of ignominy.
Carrey is following in Williams’s footsteps in one way, however: the making of idiotic political pronouncements. Talking with the Chicago Tribune to promote A Christmas Carol a few days before the film’s release, Carrey released the following burst of political flatulence:
"I was thinking about it this morning, how this story ties into everything we’re going through," says Carrey, who, thanks to the technology, plays Scrooge as well as the three ghosts haunting him. "Every construct we’ve built in American life is falling apart. Why? Because of personal greed and ambition. Capitalism without regulation can’t protect us against personal greed.. . .
Making certain that many people reading the interview will resolutely avoid seeing the film, Carrey describes the protagonist as follows:
"Scrooge is the ultimate example of self-loathing," Carrey says, noting that, after playing the title character in Ron Howard‘s "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," he was merely "going to the source" in fleshing out Scrooge.
"Beware the unloved, I always say," Carrey continues. "They’re the ones that end up being the mean guys. It comes from that deep, spiritual acid reflux within them. With Scrooge it infects his whole being."
Whereas Dickens presented a reasonably nuanced view of the issues the story brings up, and did so with an appropriate narrative tone, Carrey makes the latest film version sound like a hamfisted socialist diatribe, hardly a strategy for drawing middle American families in great numbers.
Zemeckis, for his part, avoided making any big political claims about the film. That’s the wise course, and given the already annoying qualities suggested by the commercials and trailers for the film, the last thing his version of A Christmas Carol needs is for its star to blunder around the media with claims that this energetic fantasy is any kind of brief for socialism.
–S. T. Karnick
Fortunato–I certainly wouldn’t characterize Carrey’s performance in The Truman Show as a serious performance. It’s a comic performance in a serious film; he gets no deeper into the character than his performance in, say, Liar, Liar.
I agree with your point about the unattractiveness of motion capture animation.
As to the story line, your point about it being “done to death” is an argument for the proposition that in fact there is something powerful in it that speaks eloquently to impulses deep in the human heart, and which this film appears to be missing.
After all, Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is still inspiring numerous remakes, and new angles on the story are common. There was even a well-received musical version a couple of years ago.
As Daniel Crandall notes in his comment, the core of the story is the personal transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge. We all know people like him, and we all wish they’d change. And we all know that we ourselves tend to be somewhat like him, and if we are honest and decent at heart, we too wish we’d change.
That story line is so resonant with our experiences that it makes a natural connection with audiences.
Thus I would humbly suggest that the superficial, adolescent approach indicated by the trailers and prerelease publicity works against the expectation of what the story usually gives to audiences. That contradiction, in my view, is the dominant factor making it a weaker attraction than it might have been.
Carey’s diatribe against the market economy tells me that he needs to be schooled on Dickens’ original work. The fascinating thing about A Christmas Carol is its portrayal of Scrooge’s personal transformation and the great boon a robust market economy can be to those most in need.
If this story were to follow Carey’s and Moore’s and the rest of the Liberal Hollywood’s big government, anti-capitalist ideology, then the final visitor to Scrooge would have been the Tax Man who takes some 90% of Scrooge’s money. Instead closing with Ebenezer joyfully and voluntarily sharing his wealth and personally aiding those in his life who are in great need, we’d have seen Mrs. Cratchit standing in line at the government welfare office waiting for her ration of government food and being told that Tiny Tim might get treatment if she divorces Bob.
The beauty of A Christmas Carol is how it portrays a Damascus Road moment and how each individual must take personal responsibility for those in need. Jim Carey, in his idiotic rants, shows that he would twist this classic into one more brick in the government wall that divides not only one person from another, but that divides the person from the Divine.
“Yes, I’m aware that Carrey’s occasional serious performances have been pretty awful”
Hm, even The Truman Show?
Back to Christmas Carol, I can think of another, simpler explanation for this flop: the story has been done to death and no one is willing to pay to see it once again, no matter the star. Also, motion-capture animation may be a director’s dream but it plain sucks. It’s telling that none of the films done that way has ever been a major success and I’d be surprised that Spielberg’s forthcoming TinTin film breaks the curse.