atching snow on an IMAX screen with 3-D glasses is like being inside a snow globe. Just lovely.

Observing performance-capture characters on such an enormous canvas is something else.

In Disney's "A Christmas Carol," Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey) is animated from his brown eyes to his long, bony fingers and hunched back, but the other characters have lifeless peepers that look like they belong to creepy dolls or aliens, not humans.

It's just one of the distractions in a movie that boasts some beautiful renderings of old London and bizarre detours from Charles Dickens' 1843 novel.

---

'A Christmas Carol'

2 1/2 stars = Average
Ratings explained

• Starring: Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Bob Hoskins, Cary Elwes.
• Rating: PG for scary sequences and images.
• Web site: disney.go.com/disneypictures/achristmascarol/

---

In the original, Scrooge doesn't shrink to a miniature man who sounds like he's inhaled helium and is chased by red-eyed horses from hell in a frightful glimpse of the future. True, this is designed to take the edge off the final specter, but it seems weirdly out of place.

As anyone familiar with the book or Mr. Magoo or Muppet or Alastair Sim version of "A Christmas Carol" knows, Scrooge is a miserly, lonely bachelor. He spurns carolers and charities, scorns his cheerful nephew, is stingy with cash and coal for clerk Bob Cratchit, and has a brush with paranormal activity.

His late business partner, Jacob Marley, appears to him in the ultimate cautionary tale about what happens when you put money ahead of your fellow man. He warns Scrooge that he will be visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.

Just as Tom Hanks did in "The Polar Express," also by director Robert Zemeckis, Carrey plays multiple roles. He's Scrooge as a school boy, teen, young man, middle-age man and gray-haired crank along with the three visiting ghosts, while Gary Oldman juggles Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim and Marley.

Colin Firth is nephew Fred, and Bob Hoskins, Cary Elwes, Robin Wright Penn and Fionnula Flanagan fill key parts, too.

Zemeckis takes the technology he used in "Polar Express" and "Beowulf" to the next level here and the result is mixed. When the focus is on elderly Scrooge alone, the movie can be magical but when he is placed alongside others, it's evident he is far and away the best of the bunch.

The movie, deservedly rated PG for scary sequences and images, is also unusually solemn and scarier in some ways than "Where the Wild Things Are."

One of the spirits turns into a skeleton and then dust and blows away, while Scrooge briefly faces the ragamuffins who represent Want and Ignorance and transform into adults (one in a strait jacket).

The penny-pincher tumbles into an open grave and witnesses a future in which Bob Cratchit cries for his late son, Tiny Tim. Scrooge also is bizarrely shrunken down to size and navigates tunnels, roofs and icicles in amusement park style.

Rest assured, the message about keeping Christmas well has not been changed, and Carrey manages a convincing British accent with an Irish lilt for the first spirit.

I cannot imagine this becoming a holiday favorite, but I once thought the same of "The Santa Clause," and we know how that turned out. It lacks the fun of an "Elf" or the childish joy of "Polar Express," even.

If you're going to see the movie, spring for the 3-D version (ads list the conventional one as 2-D) although that means wearing the glasses and paying a few dollars more. That will make Marley rattling his translucent chains, snowflakes fluttering and Scrooge flying over the city without benefit of eight tiny reindeer that much better.

Looking for more from the Post-Gazette? Join PG+, our members-only web site. You'll get exclusive sports content, opinion, financial information, discounts from retailers and restaurants, and more. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.