This is the Disney one. This is the Jim Carrey one. This one surprised me.
- First of all, this is Bob "Hey, remember Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" Zemeckis directing. Which is to say, it's in the period of the 2000s where he was doing nothing but creepily uncanny-valley mo-cap CG animation - this, The Polar Express, and Beowulf. It looks extremely like a video game, with huge set pieces coming across more like cutscenes than anything.
- Second: notwithstanding that the visuals are somewhere between mildly and extremely unpleasant, Xenu help me, I think this might be the most faithful film adaptation. Like, ever, possibly.
- Seriously, there's so much dialogue taken word-for-word from the text, and there's scenes left out of most adaptations - things like Scrooge going to the tavern for his shitty dinner, Bob Cratchit sliding down an icy hill with the urchins on the way home from work, the old servants' bells in Scrooge's house all ringing cacophonously, the couple with the past-due mortgage rejoicing Scrooge is dead because they’ll have more time to pay (and at least anyone who buys the debt won’t be such an asshole about it), the shirt Scrooge died in being sold alongside his still-warm sheets, and Scrooge on Christmas Day talking to the charity solicitor, promising an undefined amount of donations “including a great many back payments.”
- This version's inspirations from previous adaptations aren't subtle, but they're good choices - the capering ghosts outside the window are clearly based on the way it was done in Scrooge (1951); Scrooge’s vision of falling into the hellish red-lit open grave is clearly lifted from Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983), lifting it from Scrooge (1970); the boys begging from the half-moon window grate of the kitchens preparing the Lord Mayor's Christmas Feast is nearly a direct rip from Scrooge (1935).
- Or rather, the last one would be, if after establishing the scene there were some comic business with the jolly cooks, instead of one sneering “Merry Christmas, from His Lordship” before hurling a scrap of meat directly into the path of a street dog that snaps it up.
- Jim Carrey's Scrooge is a nasally twerp.
- Very strong opening imagery with Marley, dead in his coffin, with coins on his eyes - immediately undercut by ham-handedly putting bits and pieces of the first paragraph of Stave One (“Marley was dead: to begin with”) in Scrooge’s mouth, and having him sign the death certificate (dated 1836, rendered sharply in what looks like Monotype Garamond) with the undertaker. I also enjoyed the staring contest between Scrooge and the undertaker - wherein it physically pains him to pay the man - capped by Scrooge proceeding to take the coins from Marley’s eyes (“Tuppence is tuppence,” he grunts).
- Similarly, the time passing effect - of the (extremely improbable for the 1830s) Scrooge & Marley sign growing faded and crooked over the title “Seven Christmas Eves Later” - isn’t bad.
- The video game feel is not helped by Marley’s chains and lockboxes coming at Scrooge like it’s a quick-time event.
- This is definitely the most gruesome body-horror Marley ever. His jaw falls half off, such that he has to operate it manually, tongue lolling out, for half a scene. This must have scared the shit out of kids who saw it in the theatre in 2009.
- The appearance of Christmas Past is extremely textual, but for the specifics of having a head like a candle flame, although it works with the cap/candle snuffer; they’re nicely, spookily fey, though.
- Similarly, the imagery of Scrooge forcing down the snuffer on Christmas Past is taken directly from the original illustrations, but the only other adaptation I’ve seen do it (and with similar body language - again, clearly an inspiration for the animators) is George C. Scott in A Christmas Carol (1984).
- Scrooge mentions that Christmas Present wears a scabbard without a sword, which the spirit indicates is to symbolize peace - again from the text, but lampshaded here, where it was just left as an implication in his description there.
- How Christmas Present shows Scrooge around is actually pretty novel; the floor of his room of plenty becomes transparent, and they ride it around London like a glass-bottomed aircraft…or a theme park ride, frankly. (Was released in 3D in the theatre, needing these extensively jumpy scenes to make it worthwhile? Of course it was.)
- Another of the rarely-used bits of dialogue from the text has Christmas Present condemning those who do “hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness” in the name of Christianity, and I am not only shocked that’s used here, but that (unlike the text, which names nobody in particular!) he’s specifically calling out “men of the cloth” here.
- The Cratchits’ conversation about Tiny Tim is more obviously whistling past the graveyard than normal.
- I've decided that Martha Cratchit - the eldest daughter, and per the text, a milliner’s apprentice who lives apart from the family - is trans culture, being a good foot and a half taller than Bob.
- Speaking of which, Bob's character design is...well, he looks like a Neanderthal. There's really no way around it, he's hairy and has a huge thick brow and broad face.
- The reveal of Ignorance and Want is creepier than usual, as Scrooge spies a withered claw-like foot under Christmas Present's robe; further, they're delightfully angry feral British children using modern slang (“NAFF OFF, YE DAFT OLD GEEZER”), who then rapidly age into terrifying adults to mock Scrooge with his own “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” speech. Want, in particular, is clearly a sex worker who’s aggressively grinding on Scrooge (!) before being dragged away in a straitjacket as a madwoman.
- Again, holy shit, this is a horror story; Christmas Present dies, graphically, at the stroke of midnight. His flesh rots away, and his skeleton crumbles into dust.
- Scrooge spends a lot of the Christmas Future sequence running from a giant, draft horse-drawn hearse, through a zombie mob. And then there’s a sequence where he’s shrunken to the size of a rat, which then proceeds through the scene of the charwoman and rag-pickers selling his mean possessions.
- Mrs. Dilber, the charwoman from the Christmas Future segment, is improbably present on Christmas Morning dusting Scrooge’s staircase - solely to set up that she runs screaming “HE’S GONE MAAAAD!” when he wishes her a Merry Christmas. (Unfortunately, he's so giddy he then tries to dance with her against her will, which is more than a bit of sexual harassment...?)
- At the end, Bob Cratchit - sent out of the office by Scrooge to get more coal - turns to the camera, breaks the fourth wall, and delivers an abbreviated version of the closing paragraphs of the text. Like, from the character’s perspective, but also, like an actor breaking character? I’ve never seen that done as anything but narration before, and it’s fuckin' weird. It’s like Judi Dench at the end of Cats (2019), a movie I first saw while high on post-surgical oxycodone, and wasn’t sure if I was imagining that part.
FINAL RATING: 7/10. Absolutely worth seeing once for the sheer baffling spectacle of the body horror, and the surprising amount it draws directly from the original novella...if you can stomach Jim Carrey doing a funny voice for that long.
