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Do we need another take on Dickens' Yuletide favourite, already immortalised by Alastair Sim, Bill Murray and the Muppets? Not if it's as lacklustre, underwhelming and drab as this animated offering.

Things kick off promisingly enough with a live-action Dickens (Simon Callow) reciting A Christmas Carol to an audience in Boston. But the decision to link the characters via a pair of mice is just the first in a series of idiotic blunders. Others include introducing a feisty female lead (Kate Winslet) and getting Nicolas Cage to voice Marley's ghost. It's symptomatic of a gutless lack of faith in the material, and not even the Winslet-crooned ballad `What If' - surely a shoo-in for the Christmas number one - can make up for it.

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