Christmas Carol – The Movie

Apart from one or two painterly aerial shots of quintessentially English scenes and one mostly impressive sequence involving the ghosts of Past, Present and Future, much of the animation in this Dickens adaptation is lacking in depth, contrast, fluidity and, above all, colour. The film-makers rarely get a handle on the storytelling and, in a vain effort to inject comedy, have even added two singularly humourless mice. Callow's Scrooge excepted, the voiceovers are uninvolving and personality-free.