Christmas is just around the corner, and for those thinking of turning into a Scrooge should heed Walt Disney Pictures’ “A Christmas Carol’s” caution against exclaiming “Bah! Humbug!” to merrymakers.

Directed and written for the screen by Robert Zemeckis, “A Christmas Carol” is a faithful adaptation of Charles Dickens’ 1843 book whose message of hope for a better self has touched generations of readers and inspired versions of myriad forms.

Zemeckis’ version is a 3D film made through performance capture, a technique that he first used in 2004’s “The Polar Express” and replicated in 2007’s “Beowulf.”

Performance capture, according to Wikipedia, refers to the recording of actions of human actors which are then used to animate digital character models in 3D animation with features like a face, fingers, and subtle expressions.

Jim Carrey leads the cast from which the 3D characters are modeled after and provided voices to. Carrey is lead character Ebenezer Scrooge as well as the three spirits – Ghost of Christmas Past, Ghost of Christmas Present, and Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come – that visit him one Christmas Eve.

Prior to that, though, his long-departed business partner Jacob Marley appeared to him as a wretched soul carrying heavy chains. Jacob warned Scrooge, an old miserable moneylender who treats his employee Bob Cratchit badly and scoffs at his nephew Fred’s Yuletide invitation, of a worse fate if he doesn’t turn over a new leaf.

Scrooge was unconvinced at first but when each of the spirits took him to his past Christmases, the present when Bob and Fred, respectively, celebrate the Yuletide, and the grim future involving his own tombstone, he changed his heart on Christ’s birthday.

Also in the cast are, among others, Gary Oldman (as Jacob Marley and Bob Cratchit), Colin Firth (as Fred), and Robin Wright (as Fan, Scrooge’s sister who dies giving birth to Fred, and Belle, Scrooge’s neglected fiancée).

Zemeckis’ homage to Dickens is visually appealing but only occasionally entertaining and mildly involving. Maybe in his next project using the performance capture technology, the writer-director can finally get it 100 percent right.