Christmas Carol: The Movie

This starts off with a live action sequence where Charles Dickens played by Simon Callow attends a venue in Boston where he relates the story of A Christmas CAROL . I wonder if Callow could have believed that a few years later he'd be reprising his role as Dickens where he attends a similar type of speaking tour in Cardiff in 1869 where one of the audience is a corpse taken over by a gaseous alien race called The Gelth ? Check out The DOCTOR WHO story The Unquiet Dead to see what I'm blabbering on about . It's certainly very interesting to see how the scenes from the two are very similar in atmosphere

As you might expect this a straight forward retelling of A Christmas CAROL in animated form so if you're expecting lines like " Pity The Gelth - We want your flesh " you're going to be bitterly disappointed . Some people may complain that the story concentrates far too much on a social political subtext but Dickens didn't write A Christmas CAROL as a ghost story , he wrote it as a story of redemption and this shines through , though perhaps a little too obviously to be truly successful . My only real complaint is that the mice are a serious distraction to the story telling

I've seen a repeating pattern when it comes to reviews of this movie, the animation's bad, mice are evil, it's different from the original.

For being different from the original, A Christmas Carol stands as one of the most adapted works out there, least it feels like it with how many we got. It wouldn't hurt to try and change things up just to stand out, otherwise people would say it brings nothing new to the table. Guess this film was gonna lose no matter what.

The mice, most I can say scenes centering on them were to pad out the runtime, At the very least they don't talk and thus don't become horribly unbearable.

The animation... I guess after seeing so many works by Don Bluth and at Disney standards had grown. The animation here is otherwise acceptable, nowhere near as terrible as people make it out to be though still not great. But it does stand out to me, whether against some beautiful storyboards. It fits the narrative and tone, so to speak.

Course you may be asking, what could be worse than this adaptation?

Bah Humduck, which hits two of the three same sins as this film, only difference is that their liberties cripple the original tale way worse.

Out of all the adaptations of this classic Christmas story by Charles Dickens, this is probably a really good one in my opinion! the story is really good though compared to the original novel; but of course in the novel Ebenezer Scrooge encounters Jacob Marley's ghost in his bedroom, but in this version it's in his office. plus the animation looks really decent and okay in my book though especially the backgrounds that look like something you see in a Christmas card or from Dicken's original illustrations to the novel that's based on the original novel, plus Simon Callow does a really good job voicing Scrooge and playing Charles Dickens in the live action segments as well as Nicolas Cage as Jacob Marley and kudos to Kate Winslet from Titanic (1997) voicing Scrooge's fiancé Belle. yet this movie has some dark moments along with some sad moments and I wouldn't call this a boring adaption, if your a fan to any adaptation to a Christmas Carol along with the Muppets version, check this one out if you have kids in your family!

There is nothing wrong with changing a story so long as you admit to it. So unlike many children's films where a classic is ruined and the child grows up in ignorance and never knows the difference, this film has the charming idea of having live action Charles Dickens go to America and tell the story to an audience explaining it isn't quite the same as how he wrote it in the book, thus growing curiosity and encouraging children to read the true classics of this world. The only real fault with this film is its ghastly title (and possible when the child of ignorance disintegrates, being too scary for children). I admit as a film student I had very low expectations of ANOTHER adaption of A Christmas Carol but was for once very pleasantly surprised and refreshingly, no one bursts into song and no animals talk in this film. The acting is very good and the voice talents obviously cared about this job. How Scrooge acts after the ghost of Christmas Future and how he makes the Christmas miracles are more realistic than I've seen in any adaption for a long time. Things don't happen with a snap of the fingers and this children's film truly does give hope to the most desperate of souls.

I've probably seen every version of "A Christmas Carol" ever done. It's probably my favorite story. It's about pain and suffering and redemption. It's a wonderful ghost story. It has great characters and a great deal of sentimentality. It take a really good actor to pull off the character of Scrooge. Alaister Sim and George C. Scott are my favorites. The character has to have a link to an unhappy past. Cruelty is one thing, but we need some humanity as well. If he is not complex, he is nothing. This had potential. It has very nice animation. The problem, for me, is that Scrooge is too young. He has the angular face of a forty year old. His lines are delivered without any underlying emotion. I don't think the people doing the voices did much homework. Also, what's wrong with the original plot. Do people change it so they can put their own signature on it. This one isn't too bad, but it's so wooden. Those mice are also really annoying. If one wanted to take this to its logical end, London at that time, was overrun with disease ridden vermin, which did decrease the surplus population. Now, I know that's really harsh to these two little guys, but I would imagine that Scrooge would have as soon flattened them with a boot as look at them. You either make a commitment to tell the story, or you throw the whole thing out an ignore the elements. The mice should go. There's also a group of social issues that are just dropped in. All in all, however, it seems so lacking in pizazz. There is supposed to be elation at the end; even giddiness. There is nothing giddy about this film.