Jim Carreyas Ebenezer ScroogeThe story
About A Christmas Carol
Robert Zemeckis retells Dickens's ghost story as a performance-capture animation, following a miserly London businessman through one night of supernatural visitations. The three spirits show him the Christmases he has wasted and the one he is heading towards. It leans harder into the eerie, vertiginous side of the tale than most screen versions.
The CineClaus verdict
The Dickens that goes hardest on the ghost story.
Zemeckis takes the eerie side seriously - the vertiginous flights, the graveyard, a Marley who genuinely unsettles - and the performance capture lays a faint glassiness over every face that either deepens the unease or ruins it, depending on your tolerance.
Oldman plays three parts and Firth is warm as the nephew. The least cosy Carol here and the most frightening, which is a choice rather than a failure.
The family desk
Can the kids watch?
Our take: the ghosts earn the rating. Marley and the final spirit reliably frighten under-sevens. Fine from about eight, better with someone sitting alongside.
BBFC advice: Contains mild threat, scary scenes and mild language.
Content advice & accessibility
- Where the advice comes from
- The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC).
- Our age guidance
- Editorial, separate from the official PG certificate, and never looser than it.
