I watched Jim Carrey’s A Christmas Carol last week, kind of by accident. Apparently CBS screens new releases each week for its employees, and I was invited to partake in this pretty awesome company perk.

The film is the third in director Robert Zemeckis’ line of motion-capture computer animations, following in the footsteps of 2004′s Polar Express and 2007′s Beowolf.

This time out the filmmaker recruited Carrey to play the lead in the Christmas classic, and to also play the three ghosts of Christmas – past, present, and yet-to-come.

Visually the film is stunning. There are some sequences that are breathtaking, and I can see why Zemeckis likes to play in the animated world – there are continuous takes in the film that are simply impossible to achieve in live action. But the film animation falls short of being photo-realistic. There were exactly three times during the entire film where I thought, “wow, that almost looks real.” And sure, that’s a tremendous accomplishment, but in the era of King Kong and Avatar you kind of expect more.

But that’s neither here nor there. The real issue is with the film’s tone. It seems as if Zemeckis got the OK to stay true to Charles Dickens’s telling (as opposed to Mickey’s version of things back in 1983), but the end result is a film that feels like an honest to goodness horror flick for the better part of its first two acts. References to death and disease abound, the color palette is kept dark and grim, and the score is taken straight from (a well-scored version of) A Nightmare on Elm Street. Which would be fine and well if this wasn’t billed as a family movie. But it is, and children in front of me were crying – crying- and their parents either had to remove them from the theatre or coddle them until the grim reaper and his stallions of death were replaced by rainbows and lollipops (spoiler alert: that never happens).

I’m not sure what Zemeckis was thinking, but it’s a shame that he took the film so dark – it prevents families from taking their children to it and reduces repeat viewings, which in turn minimize the film’s box office potential. To wit (yeah, I said it): through 7 weekends, and despite higher average ticket prices and more 3D screenings, A Christmas Carol trails The Polar Express in domestic receipts by 7%, or nearly $10 million. This, in the face of a $200 million production budget. Even if it were somehow able to reach Express’ $181 million domestic tally, and continue on its pace to a $130-140 million international cume, it would still fall short of its negative cost and would need to rely on evaporating home video sales to break even.

It’s a good movie. It’s a story well-told. But it fails to meet expectations as a family film. Which is a future Zemeckis’ ghost of yet-to-be should have revealed to him…preferably using the soothing melodies of a Disney cartoon and a color palette more conducive to the proliferation of rainbows and lollipops. Preferably.

Related posts:
I had desperately wanted to shoot an action movie…
Incredible Performance Capture Featurette on Avatar
This is how you do a movie poster.
Eastern Promises is a horrible movie.
A new Mortal Kombat movie would be…incredible?