By Lars Trodson
Is it possible to adapt yet another version of Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" without having read the book?
There are so many versions of this story -- starring everything from Barbie to animals to Muppets to Mr. Magoo -- yet all remain so faithful to the same template that it is not unreasonable to ask if filmmaker Robert Zemeckis even cracked open this modest ghost tale to make his digitized 3-D version of the story.
He may have read it, but his inspiration -- for the screenplay and not the look of the film -- appears to be other filmed versions of the story. Zemeckis even yanked, for no apparent reason, a reference from a lovely little 1935 English version of the story called "Scrooge" into his own. It's at the beginning of both films when a butcher throws out a chicken leg to some hungry kids. In Zemeckis' version I think the butcher has the voice of Bob Hoskins (who also later voices old Fezziwig, alive again!). There's no specific reference to this butcher in the Dickens' text, but given that Zemeckis and his animators copied the shape of the window directly from the 1935 version (and also made it a basement window, as does the 1935 film) seems to indicate a preference for filmic sources rather than written ones.
























