Family Movie Night: A Christmas Carol

After touring Disney’s Official Christmas Carol Train in Atlanta last October, we couldn’t wait for the movie to come out. Though it came out in November, we’d planned to watch it in Ohio when we visited for Christmas. We were all disappointed to discover that although it was playing in Alabama, it wasn’t playing up North. Once we got back to our camper and Christmas was over we didn’t really think about it and decided since we’d missed it, we’d wait for the release of the DVD. And then, today while browsing through the Sunday paper I was surprised to see an ad for a local theater that has movies for $1 on the weekend! And guess what was playing? The Christmas Carol! Well it didn’t take much to convince us to go. So we loaded up and off we went. Excited as can be.


As thrilled as we were, our enthusiasm was short lived. Though the preview of the movie we’d seen in Atlanta was incredible, I had a hard time getting into the movie and spent the first part of the movie waiting to get into it and the second part of the movie waiting for it to end. I know this sounds really bad and I don’t know if we just really blew this up in our mind to be something better than it was or if the movie really wasn’t that good. I’m still trying to convince myself that it wasn’t that bad and think that I may watch it again to see if I feel the same.

I’m not sure if the theater had issues or if it was indeed the movie, but I had a really hard time understanding what the characters were saying. I thought this problem was unique to me, but when we discussed the movie on the ride home, we all agreed that it was a good thing the book was fresh in our mind or we wouldn’t have known what was going on. We think the problem was that the background music was so loud and the characters were to soft spoken and were sometimes drowned out.

My husband also complained that the screen moved a bit too much because it hurt his eyes on occasion.

There was a family that left towards the beginning of the movie but I assumed that was because their kids were all pretty young and some of the scenes were pretty intense and a bit scary. But then, if you’ve read The Christmas Carol you may suspect that parts of the movie may be a bit suspenseful.

On the positive side, the animation is incredible. The attention to detail is evident throughout the entire movie and I did find myself marveling at all the technology that is available nowadays. When we were in Atlanta we were able to see all the work firsthand that went into the production. Disney certainly spared no expense. I wish I could show you the pictures I took on that trip, but my memory card reformatted itself. If you don’t know what that means, it means they were deleted! I do have the beautiful morph pictures you've seen throughout this post as a reminder of our day. And I think they are lovely, if I may say so myself.

Now I have a question for you. Did you watch this movie? If so, please share your opinion and let me know if you think a second viewing would be more agreeable.