There is something very wrong here. Stories from the pen of Dickens should chug along comfortably like a steam train, not hurtle headlong at the speed of a supersonic jet on test manoeuvres.

A Christmas Carol should be as cosy and familiar as piping-hot tea and buttered, toasted crumpets, not a brain-battering sensory assault that feels like downing tequila shots on a rollercoaster. It’s as incongruous as setting The Pickwick Papers in the world of monster truck racing. Just who was it who decided that Disney’s state-of-the-art motion capture animated version of Dickens’s much-loved tale of redemption should be reimagined as an action flick?

Like it or not, almost from the very outset, chimney pot-skimming action is what we get. At times, it’s like zapping through a Dickensian version of Google Earth. We are whisked from Stepney to St Paul’s in the blink of an eye, leaving our lunches somewhere near Bow. The Ghost of Christmas Future doesn’t just point ominously at Scrooge’s destiny, it pursues him through the streets and down into the sewers, driving a clattering hell-tram pulled by red-eyed devil horses.

Add to that the fact that the film will, for many people, be shown in 3-D and you have a hyperventilating, stomach-churning, thrill ride of a flick. God help us, every one — particularly those of us who are prone to motion sickness.

The man behind this high-octane slalom through twinkling, snow-dusted Victoriana is Robert Zemeckis, who also made The Polar Express, a director who eagerly embraces every new gadget in the movie-maker’s big box of tricks. Motion capture technology has been fine-tuned for this latest picture, to the extent that its star Jim Carrey is able to play four different characters, and five versions of Scrooge — from the rosy-cheeked boy forsaken by his friends and family at a Christmas long past, to the moth-eaten old miser who would steal the pennies from his dead colleague’s eyes.

This is clearly a gift for an actor as physically expressive as Carrey. He provides a deliciously spiky and mean-spirited template for Scrooge and has plenty of fun as the winsome sprite who materialises as the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Other cast members have less to play with. Colin Firth takes the role of Fred, Scrooge’s good-natured nephew, a character who is animated to look like a ruddy-cheeked, slightly creepy version of Firth himself. For all the leaps and bounds in motion capture and digital animation, the film-makers are still defeated by the challenge of providing the characters with eyelashes. As a result, all the bonny, florid-complexioned Dickensian minor characters end up looking a little like roast suckling piglets in frock coats and top hats. It’s certainly not the most aesthetically pleasing style of figurative animation.

That said, the backdrop of wintry London town is a Cockney wonderland, a richly detailed box of delights that is as packed with treats as a bulging Christmas stocking. It’s department-store grotto kitsch but it works with the manufactured nostalgia of Dickens’s writing — or at least it does until the audience is sent hurtling off on another whistle-stop tour of Central London.

Two big questions are raised by this release. First, why would anyone bother to watch this when they can rent the glorious Scrooge (1951), starring Alastair Sim, which remains the greatest Christmas movie yet made? Second, and more importantly, why, when we are barely into November, is A Christmas Carol already getting a release? Who even wants to think about Christmas when they are still picking bits of Roman candle out of their hydrangeas? And are cinemas meant to leave the film playing to three weeks worth of empty seats until the British public finally get the Christmas spirit?

The urge to release the film early to make back some of its budget is understandable I suppose, but Disney runs the risk that, by the time audiences are ready to face the onslaught of seasonal goodwill, the film will already be old news.

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