To dispatch with the pleasantries and get straight to the but : Arthur Christmas favors the late-century style of computer animation that turns characters into smooth, plasticky dirigibles, adding a Made-in-China cello-skin to faces and scenery alike and vacuum-sealing the works for maximum digital freshness. I’ve never cared for the look — if cartoons could be embalmed, that’s how I imagine they’d be — and in sharing a release weekend with a Muppets revival, the limits of Arthur ‘s CGI puppeteering seem even more stark. That is of course, until you consider almost everything outside of my but — which may well not be yours — which is to say the near-total mitigation of aesthetic bummers with an avalanche of charm, wit, and enlivening, highly oxygenated performances.
The rest is here:
REVIEW: Arthur Christmas Overrides Ugly Digital Animation with Charm, Wit and Verve
