A Christmas Carol
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures | Release Date: November 6, 2009 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
55
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
16
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
Like a dime-store holiday card, this Christmas Carol is well-crafted but artless, detailed but lacking soul. Read full review
60
EmpireAngie Errigo
It’s always a good story, this time told more creepily than usual. Good, but not as good as The Muppets’ Christmas Carol, Scrooged, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol or some great, classic live action classic versions. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol is, in its essence, a product reel, a showy, exuberant demonstration of the glories of motion capture, computer animation and 3D technology. On that level, it's a wow. On any emotional level, it's as cold as Marley's Ghost. Read full review
50
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Shortchanging traditional animation by literalizing it while robbing actors of their full range of facial expressiveness, the performance-capture technique favored by director Robert Zemeckis looks more than ever like the emperor's new clothes in Disney's A Christmas Carol. Read full review
50
Village VoiceElla Taylor
A Christmas Carol is a whiz-bang 3-D thrill-ride with all the emotional satisfaction squeezed out of it. Read full review
50
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe Williams
It's eerie rather than wondrous. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Zemeckis captures all the story’s terror, but its pathos has always been the real challenge, and it mostly eludes him. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Visually immersive but emotionally uninvolving. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
The holiday spirit feels real, but the film does not. Read full review
50
NPRScott Tobias
Gary Oldman pulls off his own hat trick, playing both noble Bob Cratchit and sickly Tiny Tim, as well as Scrooge's late partner, Marley, who haunts the miser in fluorescent green. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia Puig
This Christmas Carol seems like a pale ghost of Dickens' magical Christmas classic. Read full review
50
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
A fable that is by turns antic, scary, sweet and, in the end, slightly soulless. In other words, it's a heartwarmer that doesn't have much of a heart itself. Read full review
50
New York PostKyle Smith
Unless the director was aiming for a Victorian "Black Christmas," though, he overshot his mark Read full review
42
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Zemeckis tries to juice things up by staging numerous chase scenes up and around London, but do we really need "A Christmas Carol: The Action Picture"? Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Either you cotton to Zemeckis’ motion-capture aesthetic or you don’t: To me, it seems like an awful lot of effort for an insignificant payoff. But it appears that the filmmaker is stuck on the technique – at least until holographic movie technology comes along. Read full review
40
SalonMary Elizabeth Williams
The 3-D film is flat, the CGI-enhanced characters oddly waxen. In the center of the action is Jim Carrey -- or at least a dead-eyed, doll-like version of Carrey -- playing Scrooge, the ghosts, a younger version of himself, and probably a dozen other parts. As a general rule of thumb, one Jim Carrey is plenty for any movie. Read full review
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