Disney's "A Christmas Carol"

The oft filmed tale from Charles Dickens gets the Disney treatment in the aptly titled Disney's A Christmas Carol. Based closely on the book, director Robert Zemeckis uses the latest motion capture technology to create a photorealistic animated tale that brings Dickens' story to life. Starring Jim Carrey as Scrooge and multiple other characters, the Disney version is beautifully rendered and faithful to the source material, but at times can be loud and bombastic. Even so, it's a pretty delightful re-telling and always visually stunning, especially on Blu-ray.

The special features are few, but they pack a lot in.

Behind the Carol: The Full Motion Capture Experience is a feature length picture-in-picture viewing mode that takes you into the process of the motion capture technology. The six deleted scenes are mostly dull, but because they are unfinished, watching early versions of the scenes is actually quite fun. A featurette with actress Jacquie Barnbrook leading us through the making of the film is amusing in that squeaky clean Disney way, and a smaller feature with child actress Sammi Hanratty shows just about the same thing but in a more kid-friendly way. Lastly, a Countdown to Christmas Interactive Calendar is a useless feature that plays as a modern day Advent calendar requiring the user to put the disc into their player every day in order to access the feature and "open" an Advent calendar door only to see a random Christmas icon for a few seconds.

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Disney's A Christmas Carol
Rated PG
3D Blu-ray $49.99, 1 Disc Blu-ray $39.99, and 1 disc DVD $29.99.
www.disneydvd.disney.go.com