Dickens once wrote a series of travel essays inside Britain's mental and psychiatric hospitals,to comment on the state of Britain at the time...so in a slightly veering comment it is possible to say Micahael Palin is the closest ancestor in terms of travel documentation,as a derivative of the artse then Robert Zemecks is a natural follow up to Turner a modern artist pushing boundaries but safely reaming in confines of often stale artistic comforts.Zemeckis last live action films contact,what lies beneath and contact,are to a certain degree original,he has always been an dynamic filmmaker but with tool a progressive medium to turn him slightly bland.Motion capture here has been used for the first time as a medium to best express the story ,Bewolf and the polar express were trailers for what can be done,but were never more than a advertisement,and its a shame that such a forward thinking storyteller was hampered by a new medium.Carol works on two points Jim Carrey genuinely caring about the story and Robert Zemeckis writing a screenplay faithful in tone and matching Carrey's abilities by not adhering to his comedic strengths but applying a screenplay that veers to another side of Carey,using his abilities to 90% then tantalising the audience with no punchlines,its a cranky old man joke...with a touch of holocaust denial thrown in to balance the charachter. This could easily be performed as a one man show, in context the biggest flaw is its balamce,Scrooge becomes too good too soon,it needs length to ease this genuinely evil character to the ending without too much difference between tones.Softening the beginning would have balanced the tone but as it is the films biggest strength, the confidence of the filmmakers to let be Scrooge so vicious and in doing so highlights why he is so popular.It works by not pandering to a supposed audience,and giving Disney a great villain again,which as in the great new romance of thinking Pixar are great(its a lie,to get adults thinking its ok to see animated films),works and got me thinking about when and who was the last great animated villain....it definitely was not Pixar related.
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