A CHRISTMAS CAROL (PG, 95 mins) Starring Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Robin Wright Penn, Bob Hoskins, Lesley Manville

Scrooges of this penny-pinching world, who have enjoyed the credit crunch a little too much, can suck on their ‘Bah humbugs’.

Robert Zemeckis’s technologically-groundbreaking adaptation of Charles Dickens’s festive novella is a delightful early Christmas present.

Harnessing the technology he developed for The Polar Express and Beowulf, Zemeckis and his vast team drag the timeless fable kicking and screaming into the 21st century using state-of-the-art motion capture technology. The actors’ individual performances and facial movements are digitally recorded in real time, then rendered in eye-popping computer animation.

This time-consuming technique allows one actor to play multiple roles in the same scene.

Jim Carrey not only smacks his lips and snarls as curmudgeonly Ebenezer, but he also brings to life the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Christmas Yet To Come.

Gary Oldman plays both overworked clerk Bob Cratchit and his sickly son Tiny Tim, as well as the ghost of Joseph Marley.

In Zemeckis’s films, the cast certainly works hard for the money. Scrooge would undoubtedly approve.

Screening in Disney Digital 3D in selected cinemas, A Christmas Carol remains largely faithful to the source text, using some of Dickens’s dialogue word-for-word.

Zemeckis can’t resist the odd directorial flourish, hence a protracted, first-person perspective chase involving Scrooge and the gnarled Ghost Of Christmas Yet To Come on a horse-drawn carriage that resembles a theme park ride.

But the technology never obscures the heartfelt emotion of the novella, including some heartbreaking scenes between Bob and his wife (Manville) as they prepare to lose their youngest son to his unspecified illness.

Certain sequences are a tad scary for very young audiences, so parents may need to provide a reassuring cuddle.