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I choked on my popcorn when i saw the trailer for the new Disney version of A Christmas Carol.

"You've never seen anything like this before!" it proudly declared.

Errr, unless you've read one of the greatest works of English literature or seen one of the myriad of stage and screen versions which have been churned out at regular intervals over the years.

Everyone from Alastair Sim to Patrick Stewart, via The Muppets, have offered their take on this Christmas tale of love and redemption.

The British Film Institute even got in on the act yesterday.

But in fairness to this version, it has achieved something new, not least introducing a new generation to the genuinely scary ghostly goings on.

In that sense, it's probably closer to the original Dickens' tale than other adaptations.

Capture animation - where the actors perform their scenes wearing special bodysuits and then the action is animated - is a technique used by director Robert Zemeckis before in The Polar Express.

But here, in a story which has the central character flying over London, crawling beneath the sewers and tumbling into graves, it really comes into its own.

Jim Carrey, who can create cartoonish expressions any way, is particularly impressive and it's very clear it IS him, not just in Scrooge but in the Three Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, which he also plays.

The great advantage to the technique is that it means actors can play several different roles and the whole film - crowd scenes and all - is pretty much staffed by just 15 actors.

The doubling up makes sense, particularly with Scrooge, since aren't those ghosts just figments of his own imagination?

Last night's London premiere - attended by the film's stars Jim Carrey, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins and Robin Wright Penn - coincided not just with the switch on of the Christmas Lights (this early? bah humbug!) but with simultaneous screenings of the film in 28 cinemas across the country, including Glasgow's Braehead Odeon.