"A Christmas Carol" - A Review

This was one of my highly-anticipated movie, because we went to the "Christmas Carol" train promotion when it was in town and saw the visual display of the movie. It was a jaw-dropper back then, and it was a jaw-dropper when we saw it yesterday.

Let's get this out of the way first. The movie is visually stunning. In fact, one may have to go see it again because there was just so many going on in any given scene that one could miss many fine details of the movie. Some scenes were downright creepy and scary. I do not recommend this movie to small children.

The story, of course, it quite familiar, but told in a slightly different twist. However, I think that I was a bit too distracted by the visual effects that I wasn't quite convinced by Scrooge turning himself around. It appeared as if he was simply doing it just so he could go on living, not because he has finally found it in his heart to leave his old ways. There wasn't a moment, a defining moment, when he made this self-discovery. So to me, this turnaround wasn't that convincing.

I would certainly recommend this movie.

We had a problem with the 3D projection at our theater (Kerasotes Crown Village Crossing in Skokie, IL during the 1:40 PM showing, Nov. 8). When we were told to wear our 3D glasses and they started showing 3D trailers, the look wasn't quite right. I thought it was just me, but everyone in our party were playing around with their 3D glasses as well, and so were people around us. Now, we have seen a lot of 3D movies already, so we know what to expect, but this wasn't quite right. The 3D effects weren't that obvious, and there were these strange shimmering of the background. The fore ground appeared clear (but still flat), but the background shimmered, especially if one moved one's head.

I knew something wasn't right, so I went to see the manager to let him know this. He contacted the projectionist (at least, I thought he did), so I went back into the theater. When I got back to my seat, the rest of my party told me that we could see the movie properly if, get this, WE WEAR THE 3D GLASSES UPSIDE DOWN! I did, and voila! It was the 3D movie effect that I was familiar with!

Needless to say, they didn't do anything to correct this problem, and we went through the whole movie wearing the 3D glasses upside down! And we of course paid a premium to see the 3D movie. I noticed that a few people near us were also wearing the glasses upside down, while the rest just simply either didn't care, or didn't know that they were missing the 3D effect by wearing the glasses right-side up.

After the movie ended, I walked right up to the manager again and told him that the problem was never corrected. All he could tell me was that he's not a projectionist and that he has called the person working that day to do something about it. No apologies, nothing.

I'm not coming back to this theater if I can help it. It's not that they screwed up the 3D movie, it is how they handled a customer's complained. And yes, I've written to Kerasotes to voice my displeasure. It's too back too, since this used to be my favorite theater, but somehow, customer service has gone downhill very fast!

Zz.