2001’s A Christmas Carol: The Movie is incredibly misnamed. The ambitious self-proclamation of its title doesn’t come close.
It was released theatrically in Britain with only a DVD release in the U.S. It is animated and runs a bit more than an hour. The DVD has an edited beginning and ending but offers the theatrical beginning and end as a special feature. I was originally so surprised first learning it was directed by Jimmy Murakami, director of the incredible classics The Snowman and When the Wind Blows. This is the low-end of the spectrum of his work!
This feature attempts to utilize the voice talents of many well-known performers, creating on paper a good cast, but this doesn’t save the production. Even two of the actors I’ve always greatly liked and very much enjoyed, Simon Callow (Scrooge) and Jane Horrocks (Ghost of Christmas Past), do not shine with the weak adaptation. Some of the other talents among many include Kate Winslet (Belle), Nicholas Cage (Marley), and Robert Llewllyn (Old Joe) whom I’ve always loved from the Red Dwarf series.
It jumps right way into innovative adaptation madness with a large expansion of Belle’s role by having her working as a devoted nurse in a hospital for children. Coincidently, the hospital is being foreclosed by Scrooge on Christmas Eve with its resident doctor being sent to jail. The arrest is enforced by another expanded role character, Old Joe, who is a henchman for Scrooge. The expansion of Belle’s role and what she does in her present life is alarmingly similar to the equivalent character played by Karen Allen in 1998’s Scrooged.
Wait, it gets worse. Scrooge has mice friends. You read that right, there are mice that are friends of Scrooge and go most everywhere with him! Even when he is supposed to be at his meanest before Marley’s visit, he is having a sentimental exchange with mice, calling them his friends and feeding them some of his gruel. (This may even be worse than the 1997 animated version where Scrooge has a dog — I’m not watching that this year.)
Want more? It does get even worse. Because Belle never married and devotes herself to the children’s hospital, she and Scrooge are given a second chance together by the end of the “movie.” This brings tears to my eyes but not in the way I’m sure it was intended.
Some other little tidbits: Belle is a poor girl who is a childhood friend of Scrooge’s sister, Fan; Scrooge isn’t actually old, he appears to be about middle-aged; Scrooge’s nephew is non-existent. The reformed Scrooge spends most of Christmas Day wandering around the streets of London regretting shutting down the Children’s hospital and it’s too late to change the situation; Scrooge and Belle appear to enter the beginning of rekindling their relationship by the end. The theatrical beginning of the “movie” is this version’s offering of an opening by Charles Dickens.
It’s perplexing why the major changes and additions were done for this presentation. The changes do not add anything. Without them it is still barely mediocre viewing. I understand wanting to make stories and adaptations kid-friendly, but as a few prior animated A Christmas Carol versions already proved, you don’t have to sacrifice Dickens’ work to such a bad level in order to accomplish it.
25 Days of A Christmas Carol 