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I dunno. It feels a little bit like humbug.

Kim Hollis: Disney's A Christmas Carol, the latest motion capture animated release from Robert Zemeckis, opened to $30.5 million. Is this a good enough result for a Jim Carrey comedy?

Brett Beach: It's an okay opening for a Jim Carrey comedy at this point in time, perhaps comparable in its perceived "soft" opening to Yes Man last year, which wound up with over five times its $19 debut. I saw it observed elsewhere that this decade began with the Yankees winning The World Series followed by a Jim Carrey family film opening at number one (How the Grinch Stole Christmas) and that is how it is closing out. Some things may stay the same, but the difference between The Grinch's $55 million opening and A Christmas Carol's just above $30 million weekend take shows both that Jim Carrey isn't the draw he once was and that this particular tale may suffer from the feeling everyone has that they know it inside and out and all the 21st century bells and whistles can only make it seem so fresh. I thought John Hamann's Sunday column did an excellent job of looking at the phenomenon of holiday films that open in early November and are able to keep their weekly drops small until after the holidays have passed. A Christmas Carol would seem to be a likely candidate for this as well, but the next few weeks will be needed to offer a clearer indication. Mumblings I hear of concern about its being too intense for small kids could result in some lost business.





Josh Spiegel: First of all, let's clarify something: considering that this is a mostly faithful version of Charles Dickens' classic novella, I wouldn't call this a comedy, even though Jim Carrey's the lead and he's pulling Eddie Murphy duty by playing so many characters. Second of all, the initial weekend gross seems a bit disappointing, mostly due to the fact that Disney's A Christmas Carol is widely available on 3-D screens, and it's a Disney animated movie starring a still-popular actor. However, movies released at this time of year, especially family movies, have good legs. Moreover, Disney's A Christmas Carol has 3-D screens all to itself until mid-December, with Avatar. I would be surprised if the movie didn't top out somewhere near $150 million, even if the opening weekend wasn't as huge as it could've been.

Michael Lynderey: Compared to some of Carrey's more recent movies (Yes Man, Fun With Dick and Jane, and especially The Number 23), this is going to do just fine. But the real gold standard that A Christmas Carol has to live up to is that trifecta of 2000s Christmas blockbusters - the ones that opened in early November and followed through with incredible legs: The Santa Clause 2, Elf, and The Polar Express. This one cost near $200 million, and while it's clearly not going to make that much, I think if it ends up at $150 million or so it'll be a respectable enough performer. But it's going to be an uphill climb. There's oodles of competition in the next two months, and growing some legs isn't as easy as it used to be - especially for a movie with such a surprisingly mixed critical reception.

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