A Christmas Carol

Running Time: Just over an hour and a half

MPAA Rating: PG


Everybody knows the story of “A Christmas Carol”, or at least they think they do. A wealthy old miser named “Scrooge” is tormented by three Christmas spirits and a deceased associate in order to change his outlook on life for the better. The plot of Dickens’s classic novel has become iconic to today’s audience through years of other franchises adapting their characters into the plot. The quality of these retellings has had a fantastic range; from staying fairly true to the original (such as “Scrooge” in 1951 and the Oscar-winning animated version in 1971), to making silly updates (“The Muppet Christmas Carol” and “Mickey’s Christmas Carol”, both of which were also made by Disney), to complete bastardizations (“An American Carol”, “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”, and countless more). To say the least, the very point of the book has been lost over the years, and nobody in recent decades has thought to simply stay true to the original material until now.

The film keeps its source’s dialogue resolutely intact. While this may please literature aficionados, it will bore the life out of the children to whom the movie was marketed. The indecision about which it was made for is blaringly apparent among moments of cartoonish giddiness, disturbing scenes of rotted corpses, and cheap “jump” scares all interspersed with the original Victorian language. In fact, the only entertainment that the average child would get during the entire show comes from added sight gags or characters that give lines in exaggeratedly silly voices, gimmicks that will alienate anybody looking to enjoy the classic story.

The out of place children’s comedy shtick isn’t the only thing working against “A Christmas Carol”, however. Many problems arise from director Robert Zemeckis’s signature performance capture animation technique (a style that he used on “The Polar Express”, “Beowulf”, and the upcoming remake of “Yellow Submarine”). There is a phenomenon that affects this type of film known as “uncanny valley”, which happens when people recognize nonhuman beings (such as robots and CGI animations) that pretend to be human and, as a result, are repulsed. The characters in the movie are unable to produce any believable emotion which causes a complete disconnect with the audience and leaves the actors only their voices to convincingly portray their characters.

Much like the “Harry Potter” movies, an all-star cast is used to cover even minor roles. Of course, many of the stars in this film have at least two or three characters to their name, Jim Carrey topping the bill by playing all three ghosts as well as Ebenezer Scrooge. While this may seem to be a cool idea in theory, it is absolutely pointless and only deepens the problems that are already present. It must have been difficult enough for the actors to respond to lines that have been given days or weeks ago (the scattered voice acting shows with a fervor), but dialogue between them and themselves in another personality is extremely difficult and is not done very naturally or believably at all in this case.

“A Christmas Carol” was a very influential book in its time. It helped to solidify Dickens’s legacy and even had a remarkable impact on the modern concepts of charity and redemption at Christmastime. This movie, unfortunately, carries none of that weight and instead serves as an over-stylized attempt to cash in on the season. The dialogue is simply an afterthought that is used to make way for more visual gimmicks and 3D spectacles. The performance capture animation should have been done away with in favor of live-action, as the technology has shown no significant improvement from its previous uses. In the end, if you’d like to know the timeless story then pass on this film and hear the classic literature call “know me better, man!”

Where The Wild Things Are

Running Time: An hour and a half

MPAA Rating: PG

Max is angry. He is imaginative and rambunctious, but he has no control. He knows that, like the sun, one day his energy will run out and he'll fade away. These are difficult thoughts for a young boy who already has the dilemmas of his age to deal with. Many people learn to cope with life's troubles in their own way, and Max does so by becoming a wild thing.

The movie adds some unique elements to the original Maurice Sendak storybook. Max's behavior is given a cause and his trip into the land of the wild things is given a purpose. Each of the creatures has a unique personality derived from Max’s experiences with people in his homeland. Carol (played by James Gandolfini), whose anarchic and misunderstood nature Max immediately identifies with, specifically seems to provide the boy a means for coming to terms with the father now missing from his life.

What really brings this film to life is the music. Written by Karen O (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), the songs provide a youthful vigor that complements the action on screen. It was built from scratch for the movie and great use within each context shows. Energetic tracks filled with wild instrumentation and playground yells lend credence to the playful scenes in the movie, and Karen O’s soft vocals fit in perfectly with the sentimental points.

Book purists won't be pleased to learn the extent of added material, of course, but may find comfort in the heavy involvement of the original author in the making of this film. Spike Jonze was specifically given the permission of the author, who had previously seen and highly regarded his work. Although this film does take much of the mystery and imagination out of the hands of the viewer, Sendak has given his personal approval of the interpretation after viewing the final product.

In the end, this movie wasn't quite what it could have been. It loses some of its steam toward the middle, when certain scenes feel as though they've been drawn out as long as possible to give the movie a bump to above the acceptable hour and a half mark. There are more shaky-cam running scenes in the film than an episode of "24", which could have easily become redundant and intolerable had it not been for the expressive and enthralling soundtrack. Fortunately, the movie manages to work as presented, and members of the audience may be inspired to search out the wild things within themselves once more.

The easily queasy should be warned; much of this movie is shot by handheld camera, leading to what has become known as the "shaky-cam" effect. This can work out of some viewers' favor, but shouldn't provide a problem for the majority of audience members.

Post-Credits Scene: No

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G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra

Running Time: 2 Hours

MPAA Rating: PG-13

“G.I. Joe” is based on the cartoon of the same title that evolved from the classic military action figure of the 1960’s. The name is no longer that of an individual soldier, but of an elite military squadron similar to America’s Delta Force. It takes the “best of the best” soldiers from various military factions and uses them in the world’s most critical missions. Their assignment in this film is to safely transport weaponized nanobots which, of course, quickly goes awry when enemy schemes unfold.

Not much can be said about the quality of this movie. It very closely follows the path of its predecessors, the Transformers movies, and panders to a base audience whim: explosions and one-liners with little to no story arc. I could understand if somebody didn’t regret paying money to see it. After all, the movie stays consistent by waiting no more than 90 seconds to blow up something new. However, the type of person who would actually said this movie was “good” probably wouldn’t sit through Citizen Kane if you paid them to. There are far too many clichés in the film to list here. At one point in the movie, encouraged by the fact that I had seen many of the situations in previous action flicks, I was compelled to predict every detail of what happened before it occurred. I was correct in every case.

The basic theme of the movie is “oh, look how awesome the military is!” which is to be expected, I suppose, considering that that has been the point of G.I. Joe since its origin. There is only one other, very subtle message that I noticed toward the beginning of the film. That is when, in one short line, the man who is selling the nanobots missiles to government officials states that the machines were developed on the premise that they would be used to cure cancer. He then demonstrates how great they are at destroying things and the corruption and militarization of science meant to be used for the good of mankind is never mentioned again.

The characters are as lifeless as the plastic figures they are representing. The black soldier gives somewhat stereotypical comic-relief and anybody with an accent is a bad guy. Many characters constantly show themselves to be entirely incompetent, so it is beyond me how they make it into the military’s Ivy League squad. For soldiers who are trained to protect civilians, they sure do a bad job of it. In a scene where the team attempts to protect a national monument, I lost count of how many civilians would most likely have died because of their tactics. Even with the scores of gruesome deaths in the film, the only person who is truly apologetic in the end is the casting director.

For being subtitled “Rise of the Cobra”, the two minutes spent explaining the Cobra Commander’s origin story seems very unfulfilling. The movie is what many people have assumed that it is: a fun way to waste two hours of your life. In the end, nobody is changed, nothing is learned, and some lucky pyrotechnician has brought home the paycheck of a lifetime. G.I. Joe sums itself up rather accurately in its choice of end credits music (“Boom Boom Pow” by The Black Eyed Peas): this is for people who want to stop thinking for a while, and just enjoy the flash.

Actual Rating: This is an extremely violent movie. Dozens of unnamed soldiers and civilians die onscreen, women are brutally killed, children bloody each other up and one 10 year old murders an old man with a sword. To top all of that off, the director seems to have a fetish for people being stabbed through their eye. While the movie is obviously aimed at kids and young teens, the content is definitely not suitable for younger viewers. The amount of graphic, unpunished death most egregiously earns this movie an “R” rating. However, thanks to modern day standards, no movie gets that kind of rating unless it does something REALLY bad (like saying a naughty word or showing a nipple).

I’ll be making a case for my views on the hierarchy of “offensive material” in opposition to the MPAA’s in an essay that I will post on this blog.

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