'A Christmas Carol' (PG)(out of four)

Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" has had so many incarnations in film and television that in order for anything to be fresh about it, there would have to be a newfangled way of viewing it to create any excitement around it. So, leave it to Disney and filmmaker Robert Zemeckis to take the Dickens classic and turn it upside down (at times, literally).

There's not much new to be added to the story. Everyone knows the tale of the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge who grinches his way through Christmas, making everyone around him second guess their utter cheerfulness about the holiday.

Old and alone on Christmas Eve, he's visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley, who has died seven years before the slice-of-life of this story. Marley confides in Scrooge what he has learned since his demise, and tells Scrooge about the impending arrival of three spirits: The Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost Of Christmas Yet To Come.

In this Disney Dickens, the folks who brought us the now-classic "Polar Express," director Zemeckis and friends, use the same filmmaking technique, which uses motion-capture, a special-effects process in which an actor's performance is recorded, digitized and then animated.

Although the characters look a bit waxy, and at times appear a bit creepy with their strange blank stares, the technique actually works in perfect harmony with the oftentimes rubber-faced comedian Jim Carrey, who embodies Scrooge and first two spirits. (He's the voice of the third spirit, who's cast as a black, cloaked figure with a long, skeletal hand.)

The animated Carrey gets the chance to remain at his over-the-top best, especially as the candle flame as Christmas Past, and the rotund, and bearded Nordic-esque Christmas Present, and here, the animation serves to work in tandem with Carrey's frenetic approach.

Gary Oldman plays ghostly Marley, Scrooge's faithful clerk Cratchit, and the blessed Tiny Tim. Colin Firth is Scrooge's jovial nephew, Fred, and Bob Hoskins is light as a feather as the festive former Scrooge employer, Fezziwig. Zemeckis regular Robin Wright Penn plays Belle, Scrooge's wife.

On top of the motion-capture, there's the 3-D effects that sends the scenery into a roller-coaster swirl. From the get -go, there are twists and turns over rooftops of snowy, gloomy Victorian England, where Scrooge and those that inhabit his world exist.

Some slow moments toward the beginning may have the Saturday morning cartoon set squirming out of their seats, but once the action takes off, it really put the momentum into overdrive.

Scrooge is at the center of the whirlwind, of course, practically getting sent to the moon as he catches a ride aboard a rocket that hurls him into space. He's also tossed deep into a graveyard, chased through cobble stone streets by black horses with red eyes, and slid head first through a line up of hanging icicles.

There's a feeling in the film that everything old is new again with the reincarnation of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" by Disney. It’s a breath of fresh air, just in time for the holidays.