Saw A Christmas Carol in 3D with Julia with both of us bored with stomach aches...

Now where was I? I haven't had much time to write this blog lately. I've had a pretty brutal release coming up and have been working late a lot.

Laura had to work today, which she normally doesn't do, so I decided that Julia and I should see a movie.

I had seen the trailers for the new movie, A Christmas Carol, and it looked decent. I was even thinking that I would see it when it came out since I love 3D movies, but decided against it once I read the tepid reviews. It's getting a 58 percent positive average rating on the website rottentomatoes.com, but some of the bad reviews highlight what I didn't like about it.

I had read words like 'lifeless' in the reviews and was scared about that so I decided not to see it. A Christmas Carol was never my favorite Christmas story. I only really liked the comedy versions of it like the movie "Scrooged". Also, I still fondly remember the HBO production of it with Rich Little playing almost all the parts. I'm sure it's awfully dated now, but it was pretty funny. In that version, Rich Little, the comedian, plays as W.C. Fields as Scrooge, Richard Nixon as Jacob Marley, Humphrey Bogart as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Peter Falk as Columbo as the Ghost of Christmas Present and Peter Sellers as Inspector Cluseau as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. What I remember most about it was his choice to play Tiny Tim as Truman Capote.

That special was in my mind as I was watching this movie today because I was wishing that I was seeing that one. I almost felt sorry to drag Julia to see it, but I thought she should at least see it to have a background in the play since it's a classic and often referenced in shows and pop culture.

The previews and even the movie trailer seemed to suggest that this is a modern retelling of A Christmas Carol with more comedy seeing as how Jim Carey plays the role of Scrooge, but that's not the case.

I could not believe how dark this movie was. It was so dark and quiet in the parts leading to Scrooge's ghostly visits that I was worried that they didn't have the projector bright enough. But then when things started to happen, it was all bright and noisy, which I guess was the point.

Robert Zemeckis wrote and directed this adaptation. Maybe Robert is manic depressive because that's how this movie feels. At some points, it's dark, gloomy, quiet and humorless. At other points, it's so loud and silly that you wonder if you're watching two movies. The movie also faithfully uses a lot of the lines of dialogue from the book, which made it hard to follow. I had to explain to Julia what some of the things meant as they really weren't explained well. Some parts felt rushed. Others took forever.

I was so disappointed that they didn't make a more humorous adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Since they didn't, I'm wondering why they even bothered making an animated movie about the story of Scrooge.

I asked Julia what she thought of the movie was and her response was that she liked it somewhere in the middle. It was okay for her, which is my sentiments, too.

One last thing, Robert Zemeckis committed what I think it his greatest sin from The Polar Express in that rather than have several talented people voice the different characters, he had Jim Carey and others voice several characters. Not only is Carey Scrooge, but he's all three ghosts of Christmas. It's pretty obvious during the ghost of Christmas Present sequence because he laughs a lot, which sounds exactly like Scrooge's laugh. It's distracting for me to hear that, just like it was to have Tom Hanks voice multiple characters in The Polar Express. It's a minor gripe, but that's just me.