-By Kevin Lally

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Charles Dickens’ classic holiday tale A Christmas Carol has seen many variations over the years, from the Muppets to Mickey Mouse to Mr. Magoo, from a contemporary satire starring Bill Murray to a musical version headlined by Albert Finney. Now, the supernatural fable of the misanthropic Ebenezer Scrooge gets a deluxe, dizzying 3D treatment courtesy of Disney and performance-capture pioneer Robert Zemeckis. Disney’s A Christmas Carol is a far cry from the quaint British movies that were longtime holiday TV perennials; it’s Dickens for the ADD generation, but there’s no denying the astonishing craft invested in this eye-popping new edition.

Zemeckis’ technology, first unveiled in The Polar Express and at that time somewhat problematic because of its ghoulishly dead-eyed human characters, digitally records live performances and then transforms the actors into any persona and places them in computer-generated environments. In exchange for a certain lack of facial expressiveness, the filmmaker is able to create imaginary worlds and choreograph camera movements beyond the capacity of traditional live-action.

With A Christmas Carol, Zemeckis swoops and glides through a painstakingly designed 19th-century London, and realizes all the surreal possibilities of one of literature’s classic ghost stories. It helps immeasurably that the director has enlisted one of the movies’ most elastic stars to play Scrooge and three of the spectres who terrorize him one momentous Christmas Eve. Jim Carrey is usually a visual effect all on his own, but his talents make a dynamic match with Zemeckis’ technological toolbox.

Gratifyingly, the script does offer some verbatim Dickens amidst all the 21st-century flash. The opening scenes are downright sedate in setting up the miserliness and bitter bile of the wizened Scrooge, whose wrinkly close-ups are among the movie’s most impactful 3D images. But once the spirits come calling, beginning with the grotesquely chained and burdened ghost of Scrooge’s late business partner Marley, the story enters the horror and action realm. Carrey, already quite brilliant as Scrooge, is a gently spooky face-in-a-flame as the Ghost of Christmas Past, guiding Ebenezer through his once-promising youth, and a jolly bearded giant as the Ghost of Christmas Present, exposing the scorn of Scrooge’s contemporaries and the plight of his oppressed clerk Bob Cratchit and his gravely ill little boy, Tiny Tim. Carrey is also credited as playing the silent, menacing Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, who reveals Scrooge’s ultimate bleak fate.

The “Yet to Come” scenes particularly indulge Zemeckis’ penchant for rollercoaster-like 3D action, with far more allegiance to a videogame-nurtured audience than to Dickens. Fortunately, the film regains its footing with the foolproof scenes of a harshly chastened Scrooge the morning after, delighted to be alive and suddenly filled with goodwill toward his fellow Londoners.

Carrey brings inspired energy to every aspect of his multiple performances, while the gifted Gary Oldman also displays his versatility as Cratchit, Marley’s ghost and Tiny Tim. Colin Firth as Scrooge’s humane nephew and Bob Hoskins as his onetime boss Fezziwig are welcome additions to the motion-capture cast.

Giving Carrey a close race for top honors here is Zemeckis’ team of craftspeople, whose vision of Dickens’ London (often from an aerial perspective) is packed with vivid but fleeting details. Audiences may be tempted to make a second visit to catch them all even before A Christmas Carol comes around again next year.