For reasons I cannot fathom, the 1970 musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol ("Scrooge") has quite a lot of fans. I'm assuming that nostalgia and Christmas does a lot of heavy lifting on that front. I came across it a little later in life, and with quite a few other adaptations of the novella under my belt. I found its deviations from the source material jarring, the songs hopelessly simplistic and the central performance (by a way too young Albert Finney) distinctly off.
I was about 40 minutes into this rather drab Netflix movie, when the insipid song "I Like Life" started and I realised that it was, curiously, a remake of the 1970 film. Yes, we've got to the level of laziness where studios are doing remakes of adaptations of novels. I'm a bit baffled by the decision as I don't think there's anything remarkable about the Finney film that warranted this. Even the best song ("Thank You Very Much") recycled here, is a poor relation to "Consider Yourself" from fellow Dickens musical, Oliver!.
Of course, the key difference this time around is that this is animated. Aside from that, it's pretty comparable to the 1970 film. There's the same disinterest in using Dickens' dialogue, and superfluous additions (Scrooge's childhood in this , seems to be based on Dickens' rather than the pages of his novella).
I guess some of the directing choices have a nice bit of flair to them, although I found the character designs to be incredibly bland. The narrative failed to hold my interest beyond the novelty of spotting celebrity voices.
Because this is geared towards a kiddy audience, we have the addition of an dog called Prudence. Quite bafflingly, despite being a miserable old miser, Scrooge is quite the dog fan. It brings to mind the equally dumb decision made in the 2001 adaptation ("Christmas Carol: The Movie") to have Scrooge palling up with some mice to show his softer side, pre-haunting. I guess the presence of these sort of character takes the edge of the more horrific aspects of the tale, but it just makes you realise how well-judged the muppet version is. And frankly, with that around, adaptations like this are hopelessly redundant.
I was about 40 minutes into this rather drab Netflix movie, when the insipid song "I Like Life" started and I realised that it was, curiously, a remake of the 1970 film. Yes, we've got to the level of laziness where studios are doing remakes of adaptations of novels. I'm a bit baffled by the decision as I don't think there's anything remarkable about the Finney film that warranted this. Even the best song ("Thank You Very Much") recycled here, is a poor relation to "Consider Yourself" from fellow Dickens musical, Oliver!.
Of course, the key difference this time around is that this is animated. Aside from that, it's pretty comparable to the 1970 film. There's the same disinterest in using Dickens' dialogue, and superfluous additions (Scrooge's childhood in this , seems to be based on Dickens' rather than the pages of his novella).
I guess some of the directing choices have a nice bit of flair to them, although I found the character designs to be incredibly bland. The narrative failed to hold my interest beyond the novelty of spotting celebrity voices.
Because this is geared towards a kiddy audience, we have the addition of an dog called Prudence. Quite bafflingly, despite being a miserable old miser, Scrooge is quite the dog fan. It brings to mind the equally dumb decision made in the 2001 adaptation ("Christmas Carol: The Movie") to have Scrooge palling up with some mice to show his softer side, pre-haunting. I guess the presence of these sort of character takes the edge of the more horrific aspects of the tale, but it just makes you realise how well-judged the muppet version is. And frankly, with that around, adaptations like this are hopelessly redundant.
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