It can be said that Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Story is one of the most adapted Christmas stories in film. The definitive version is probably the 1951 version staring Alastair Sim. I personally have fond memories of 1992’s The Muppets Christmas Carol, as well as 1988’s Scrooged, which gave a modern take on the tale.
This latest adaptation by Robert Zemeckis stays pretty close to the source material, with the exception of a few action sequences (that were probably meant to take advantage of the fact the film was in 3D).
In addition, like the rest of Zemeckis’ films from the last five years, the film was a motion-capture CGI film in which the actors filmed their performances beforehand. This results for characters that look vaguely creepy in how they look like the actors, yet in a weird animated way.
As for the 3D effects in the film, I thought they were decent. There were very few “in your face” sight gags and it seemed that the 3D was meant more for depth (especially in the flying scenes).
In the end, I say that this was a decent adaptation (even though I still will consider the Muppets as my favourite).
8/10
