Christmas Carol: The Movie

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.

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.

Bookended by Simon Callow as Charles Dickens on an American tour, we get an animated version of the novella with a fine cast that includes Callow as Scrooge, Kate Winslett, Nick Cage, Jane Harrocks, Michael Gambon, and Rhys Ifans.

Nothing is ever going to topple the 1951 version with Alastair Sim as Scrooge from the top of the pile (with the Mr. Magoo version a sentimental second, even with wazzlebewwy dwessing). This animated version tells its variation of the familiar tale well. Even so, there are numerous reasons why it did poorly at the box office. Most obvious among them is the choice of color palettes. For the first third of the film, through the journey of Scrooge into the past, we are confronted with a dull, brown wash to everything. The choice makes perfect sense on paper. It shows the world from Scrooge's viewpoint, and it is only the opening of his heart that brings light and color into his world. Nonetheless, it is dull, and twenty-five minutes of dullness is not a good way to begin anything, Cicero to the contrary.

The other issues are more personal. I have seen more than a dozen versions of the tale, so the beginning, with its air of mystery as to who Kate Winslett may be is no mystery to me. True, to someone seeing this as the first version of the tale, it may beguile. But that novitiate is not going to get the purpose of Callow as Dickens. The net result is that this is perfectly adequate, but not particularly telling.

Darcel, Pam etc are - or were - the Solid Gold Dancers ("Solid Gold" was an American pop music show in the 1980s); in the movie "Scrooged" six of them (guess which two were absent) made a cameo appearance as part of the cast of Bill Murray's TV version of the classic Charles Dickens story... and there's the biggest problem with "Christmas Carol: The Movie" right there. Not the presence of leggy, gorgeous American girls in skimpy attire - such a thing could only have benefitted this movie - but the stunningly definitive and frankly ignorant title; so all the other versions of the novel (and there have been quite a few down the years, featuring casts from Alastair Sim through Henry Winkler [in the TV movie "An American Christmas Carol"] to Michael Caine in "The Muppet Christmas Carol" - not to mention the musical "Scrooge," at least two animated versions, and countless episodes of TV shows borrowing the whole story, like "WKRP In Cincinnati" and "The Odd Couple" to name but two) don't count then?

For a movie to live up to such a title, it would have to be the best version ever, and this isn't. It isn't helped by having live-action bookends of the great man (played here by Simon Callow, also the voice of Ebenezer Scrooge) performing a dramatic reading of his book in Boston. Or by having a pair of mice throughout the movie as the closest things to soulmates the man has (cute animals should be left to Disney and Disney alone). Or by animation that's depressingly crude for the most part (it all looks like a poor 1970s TV show, with the exception of the journeys the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present take our "hero" on, where the movie really does come to life for a bit). Or by Piet Kroon and Robert "Kryten" Llewellyn's script, or Julian Nott's score (pains me to say it, but the songs from Kate Winslet and Charlotte Church are the highpoints).

And as for Nicolas Cage as Jacob Marley... not since the late lamented Lorenzo Music did Peter Venkman on "The Real Ghostbusters" has there been such a shockingly bad case of cartoon miscasting. And some people wonder why so many of us love Pixar.

Ebeneezer Scrooge (Simon Callow) is a cold hearted miser who makes no secret of his contempt for the holidays as he runs his moneylending services with no room for compassion or humanity. Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his deceased partner, Jacob Marley (Nicolas Cage) who is now condemned to wander the Earth in the shackles he forged in life and tells Scrooge that a similar fate awaits him with an even longer and heavier chain. Marley offers Scrooge a chance to avoid his fate by telling him three ghosts, the Ghosts of Christmas Past (Jane Horrocks), Present (Michael Gambon), and Future who show Scrooge his long forgotten past, its effects on those in the here and now, and what may happen if he continues on his course unaltered.

Christmas Carol: The Movie is a 2001 animated adaptation of the Charles Dickens novella A Christmas Carol directed by Jimmy Murakami who'd previously worked as a supervising animator on the iconic short The Snowman as well as directing When the Wind Blows. The film was released in the UK in 2001 where it underperformed making a mere $200,000 against an estimated 6 million Pound budget and with the exception of Norway the film went direct-to-video elsewhere including the United States where it would be released by MGM in 2003 with little fanfare. What critics who actually bothered to see the film were primarily negative in their reception and to this day the film remains one of the more forgotten and obscure adaptations of this material as there's really not much here that wasn't done better in either prior adaptations or ones that came afterwards.

While there is a certain appeal to some parts of the animation per the standards Murakami set for himself in The Snowman and When the Wind Blows, the animation itself feels like it's slightly sloggy with the characters' motions often feeling as though they're in motion through molasses. There's also some instances where the character designs fall into the uncanny valley with some attempts to make the humans more realistic looking resulting in some really unappealing aesthetics such as with the ghost of Christmas Past. In terms of the writing, the film does hit many of the major beats of the story, but issues with the pacing, placement of certain scenes, or added elements end up undermining the integrity of the narrative. The movie takes a really long time before it actually even gets to the arrival of the ghosts with the opening 30 minutes dedicated to establishing what Scrooge's lost love Belle played by Kate Winslet is doing with a hospital, antics involving two mute mice characters to whom Scrooge is uncharacteristically nice to, and there's no real buildup to the appearance of Jacob Marley whose appearance now comes before the collectors for the poor in a strange decision. Once we go through the three ghosts everything feels oddly compressed and rushed but also like we're going nowhere as there's a lengthy bit of animation done in the same style as The Snowman flight scene where Scrooge and the ghost of Christmas present sprinkle goodwill from the ghost's torch rather than actually looking at the present. But easily the biggest failure of the film lies at the end where the cathartic ending where Scrooge mends his ways feels trimmed down considerably and is lacking in the jovial spirit one typically associates with that ending.

Christmas Carol: The Movie is a not particularly impressive take on this story and there's a reason most aren't even aware of its existence. Aside from the "wha?" factor of having Nicolas Cage voice Marley this version of A Christmas Carol isn't particularly well told or well-acted and the animation doesn't do much service to this material.