It’s Christmas time and, as Bob Geldof and his Band Aid cronies would have you believe, there’s no need to be afraid. When it comes to going to the cinema this festive season at least, they may be right. Holiday movies straight out of Hollywood, desperately trying to prove themselves the next National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation are nowhere to be seen. Instead, we’re being treated to modern spins on far more traditional tales.

Brit comedy Nativity! is out this week, but Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol has been out for almost a month now. Was it too soon? Almost certainly, though the supermarkets have been trying to force Elton John’s Step Into Christmas down our throats from the moment their last pumpkin was sold, so Disney can be forgiven.

A Christmas Carol is one of the classic stories that gets an airing on the big and small screens around the festive season. A quick search on Wikipedia will reveal 20 big-screen adaptations have been made over the last century alongside dozens more for television and radio. While Zemeckis’ version is the latest (and Disney’s third) take on the classic Dickens tale, it is by no means the best.

Jim Carrey takes on the roles of both Ebenezer Scrooge and the three spirits, thanks to the wonder of ImageMovers Digital’s performance capture technology – previously seen in The Polar Express and Beowulf, both produced by Zemeckis.

Carrey has a ball with all four parts – though, admittedly, it’s hard for an actor to fluff the role of the mute Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. His Scrooge is every bit the snarly, mean-spirited old codger you imagined when you first read Dickens’ story. There is no face better suited to the performance capture technique than Carrey’s and his body is just as animated when it comes to Scrooge’s redemption.

While Zemeckis would try and have you believe he has carefully adapted Dickens’ novel he has turned the gentle tale of Christmas redemption into a stomach-churning rollercoaster of a movie. The warm grin that springs across your face as 3-D snow falls gently over Dickensian London is undone by a number of motion-sickness inducing sequences purely there because the film is available in the third dimension. An absurd chase sequence involving the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come chews into the running time when more attention could have been paid to the film’s conclusion – Scrooge’s final acts of redemption are given all of three minutes.

It’s the curse of the computer-animated film that strikes all but Pixar’s best efforts. While visually impressive, the film is lacking any emotional depth. It’s packed with action sequences which will keep the ADHD generation watching, but it’s at the price of a truly satisfying experience. You’ll probably still have a smile on your face as the credits role – Tiny Tim’s final line has that effect on you – but on the whole, Zemeckis’ adaptation lacks heart. The Muppets’ Christmas Carol proved that Scrooge’s tale doesn’t need to be a non-stop thrill ride to be entertaining for kids. Or maybe that was just my generation…

Old man, signing off. Disney’s A Christmas Carol gets 3 out of 5.