Cinema Alliance Movie Reviews

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The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is the latest release from director David Fincher (one of my personal favorites director-wise) since The Social Network. Check out Fincher

Jim Carrey stars in this animated re-telling of the Dickens Christmas classic. The story goes as you’d expect and aside from being a truncated version, the story holds true to the original. Less emphasis on Tiny Tim and the other side characters and more on Scrooge in this iteration but that was kind of necessary given the nature of the presentation this time. It keeps moving, which is kind of a drawback given the pacing of the original story is slower and more detailed and seemingly by comparison, a better fit in terms of pacing.

This version isn’t necessarily bad, it has merit, especially visually. The detail and the animation is amazingly detailed, beautiful and at times, exhilarating. There are some flying scenes that made me wish I had seen the film in the theater. Unfortunately, some of the characters just look, well, creepy. Especially Scrooge, who is supposed to be not-likable and he is. The problem is, even after his character arc, he still seems creepy, maybe even moreso when he’s trying to be nice. The dour design of the characters is something that would be true to the look of the people at the time but remains resonate after the point where the story should turn more uplifting.

The voice acting is well done and includes a great lineup that includes Jim Carrey playing Scrooge along with a number of other characters alongside Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Cary Elwes, Bob Hoskins and Robin Wright.

Robert Zemeckis wrote the screenplay and directed.

It’s worth seeing if you’re tired of watching the black and white version and want to shake things up a bit. I would see the original first if this is your first viewing or perhaps check out Bill Murray’s Scrooged instead.

reviewed by Sean McKnight

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