Metacritic reviews

Netflix’s Scrooge: A Christmas Carol manages to delight thanks to solid animation, a lively cast, and strong musical performances.

It’s all a bit much, really, and the constant tonal shifts from a sort of demonic Fantasia to bouncy musical numbers proves more than a bit jarring. It doesn’t help that none of the songs are particularly memorable.

There are too many cute influences, too many perfect musical numbers and even the physical rendering of the characters themselves belie the gritty human struggle that has remained at the core of this story for this to render the true story of Ebenezer Scrooge.

If nothing else it’ll dazzle your senses, even on a small screen.

This update has its moments of aplomb, but too many of Dickens’s most incisive lines are no more, which invites the not entirely charitable, two-word retort Scrooge made famous.

Just about any other rendition of Dickens’ classic novella that you can hunt down is going to be better than this treacly humbug from Netflix.

God will bless us, everyone, if the inevitable next "A Christmas Carol" is better than this one.

If the underlying message is to be decent before it’s too late, then be nice to yourself and queue up the berserk and brilliant Muppets Christmas Carol, why don’t you? You only live once.