Could someone please keep Jim Carrey and director Robert Zemeckis away from cherished holiday classics? We've already had to endure Carrey mugging it up as the Grinch while Zemeckis turned "The Polar Express" into a bloated and freaky-looking theme park attraction, and now these two have gone and put the stink on Charles Dickens' beloved "A Christmas Carol."

While Zemeckis' brand of ooh-cool-it's-3-D filmmaking added zest to "Beowulf," here it just gets in the way. Remember how completely superfluous that runaway-train segment was in "Polar Express"? Multiply that by numerous flying-over-London and scary-carriage-on-the-rampage sequences this time around.

Carrey, at least, doesn't go over the top; whatever hamminess he brings to the role is at least appropriate for portraying Ebenezer Scrooge, a character who starts the piece at one extreme of human behavior and ends it on another. In this version, the first scene shows us a Scrooge so skinflint that he removes the pennies from the eyes of his dead partner, Jacob Marley (Gary Oldman); "Tuppence is tuppence," he mutters as the undertaker gapes in horror.

Thanks to the motion-capture technology Zemeckis apparently loves so - again, it worked in "Beowulf," but here and in "Polar Express," everyone just looks rubbery and creepy - the lead actors get to play multiple roles. Carrey acts opposite himself as all three Spirits of Christmas (the Ghost of Christmas Past's accent wobbles between Scottish and Liverpudlian) while Oldman pops up again as a gnomish Bob Cratchit and a Tiny Tim that'll make your skin crawl.

Bob Hoskins looks just right as kind old Mr. Fezziwig, but that may be more of a testament to the actor's physiognomy than to the motion-capture process, which makes most of the film's cast look like they just sauntered out of Madame Tussauds.