It's hard to cite a worse case of CG infatuation than that of Robert Zemeckis. And this is true even in a universe in which George Lucas turned Star Wars into a CG cartoon, and I don't mean the animated Clone Wars series on TV either. Robert Zemeckis' case, unlike Lucas' is tragic, because Robert Zemeckis was a real filmmaker, who decided to abandon working with people, in favor of trying to make CG models look like people.

The sheer pointlessness of this task seems all the more pointless after creepy Uncanny Valley movies like The Polar Express, Beowulf and Monster House (a movie that might have become a children's classic had it been done in live action back in the 1980's) failed not only at the box office, but only succeeded in creeping out audiences. Now Robert Zemeckis is back this holiday season, and having learned next to nothing from the failure of the Polar Express, has retrofitted Dickens' A Christmas Carol for his usual CG treatment.

Now unlike The Polar Express, Beowulf and Monster House, A Christmas Carol is a movie that can be made perfectly well in live action, more so even because it really is not a special effects spectacular. So naturally Robert Zemeckis has boosted up the visions and pushed the limits, and once again missed the point by again transforming a human story into an inhuman uncanny valley story.

Someday Robert Zemeckis may actually produce a CG classic. But so far all he's done is produce creepy CG failures.