Title:
A Christmas Carol
Format:
Direct-to-video animated musical film
Country:
USA
Production
company:
DiC Entertainment
Year:
1997
Length:
72 minutes
Setting:
Victorian London, supposedly, although one with a
heightened reality where dogs can growl out “Bah, humbug!”
Background:
DiC Entertainment were well known for two things – their
ident, featuring a young voice cheerfully saying “Dick!” and thus bringing a childish laugh to many of us with an
unsophisticated sense of humour, and also for the long slew of animated series
they churned out in the 1980s and 1990s. This straight-to-video feature film
effort will not be remembered as one of their greatest contributions to the
history of animation, not in any way, shape or form. Indeed, while I’ve only
seen a tiny fraction of their output, I’d be amazed if they ever put out
anything worse than this.
Cast and crew:
For a shockingly bad film, there are some shockingly good
actors involved – although perhaps they only had to turn up to a voiceover studio
for a day or two, and hadn’t bothered reading the script beforehand. You
certainly wouldn’t expect performers of the calibre of Tim Curry as Scrooge,
Michael York as Bob Cratchit and Whoopi Goldberg as the Ghost of Christmas
Present to have accepted this work if they’d actually sat down and read the
script beforehand.
Director Stan Phillips had worked on various well-known
animated series, such as The Real
Ghostbusters, Muppet Babies and
even Transformers, but doesn’t seem
to have done a great deal after this film. I can’t say I’m surprised – perhaps
after serving up this tripe he was banned from ever directing anything ever
again. It would not be an undeserved sentence.
Scriptwriter Jymn Magon had worked for Disney for many
years, including on some quite decent series such as Duck Tales and Chip ‘n’ Dale:
Rescue Rangers. Perhaps less surprisingly, I learn that he was “creative
consultant” on the animated film Titanic:
The Legend Goes On, which is apparently widely regarded as one of the worst
animated films ever made – although whoever decided that may not have seen this
version of A Christmas Carol.
Underdone Potato:
This goes its own way quite early on, with Scrooge’s pet
dog, and Tiny Tim meeting Scrooge when he comes to see his father in the office
at the end of the day. This encounter seems to take Scrooge aback somewhat, and
therefore risks making him seem a tiny bit sympathetic rather too early.
We have the visits from the charity gentlemen and from
nephew Fred, and an inordinate amount of time is spent on Scrooge’s dinner at
the tavern. Said tavern is not a very melancholy place at all, but actually
quite jolly, with a waitress and clientele who mock Scrooge for his miserly
ways.
Marley looks like a chubbier version of Dick Van Dyke in Diagnosis Murder, and only tells Scrooge
the time that the first Spirit will arrive.
 |
| Oh good, a comedy dog sidekick... |
Past:
For no reason that’s ever explained, the Ghost of
Christmas Past resembles a young boy wearing some sort of Pearly King bellboy
outfit, and is saddled with one of the most appalling cock-er-nee accents this side of Mary Poppins.
We see the schoolroom, and I must at least note that they
include young Scrooge’s fascination with storybooks to keep him company, which
most other versions omit. We seen Fan coming to fetch him away, then Christmas
at the Fezziwigs, and the parting with Belle. The older Scrooge watching on
beseeches his younger self to “go after
her,” something which has become a regular feature of adaptations down the
years, although doesn’t occur in the book itself. We don’t see Belle’s later
happy marriage here, though.
Present:
Probably the best part of the film, although that’s not
saying a great deal, and the only part where they try doing anything
interesting with the story. Instead of a jolly, bearded, Father Christmas-type
figure, the Ghost of Christmas Present is depicted a jolly, chubby woman,
although apart from external appearances the character of the spirit is much
the same as ever – and they even keep the textual detail of the spirit ageing
noticeably over the course of its time with Scrooge.
Whoopi Goldberg voices the part, and I’d rather she’d
been allowed – or chosen – to use her own accent rather than the one she
adopts, which sounds a bit like someone doing a very poor quality impersonation
of Queen Elizabeth II.
This was also the only section of the film where anything
they intended to be comic made me laugh – as the spirit takes Scrooge out of
his bedroom window to fly into the visions, he irritably mutters that he has “…got to get a lock for that window…” as
he’s now fed up of being led out of it by spirits. Even a streak of piss can
glitter in the sunlight, so it seems.
In terms of the visions presented, we see the main ones
usually offered up by the Ghost of Christmas Present – Christmas at the
Cratchits, and the party at Fred’s. Both are lumbered with a dreadful song to
sing,
Yet to Come:
The most faithful to the book of the spirits, presented
in much the usual manner, although with visible hands which are wizened rather
than skeletal, in this case. We see the main visions – the businessmen
discussing Scrooge’s death, the Cratchits mourning Tim, and Scrooge’s things
being pilfered. In this case, the “Old Joe” scene is much more like that in the 1977 BBC Television version than it is the book, with Mrs Dilber and a man who
may be either Old Joe or the undertaker’s man in Scrooge’s own rooms taking the
things. Which, as with the 1977 version, makes it odd that Scrooge doesn’t seem
to recognise where he is.
What’s To-Day:
There’s a boy out of the window, and a turkey is sent
for. In an odd similarity to the 1949 US television version, Fred and his wife
turn up at the Cratchits, and are later joined there by Scrooge, who tries his
mean act before telling Bob he’s going to raise his salary. As also happens in
other versions, the film finishes with Fred reading some of the closing
narration from the book in voiceover.
 |
| Young Ebenezer and Dick, in a DiC production... |
Review:
You can tell this is going badly quite soon into
proceedings when you see that Scrooge has been given a pet dog, Debit, whose
tedious pratting around is presumably supposed to help add appeal to the story
for young children, or perhaps some half-arsed idea of humanising Scrooge and
showing from the start that he isn’t completely a lost cause. You can tell what
a stupid idea this is when even the makers of the film give up on it part way
through, and only have Debit accompany Scrooge on the visions of the past,
before returning at the end after he awakes from his visions of the future.
There is very little to redeem this film from the depths
it plunges to almost immediately with the dreadful opening musical number. The
fact that this opening number is about Scrooge only serves to highlight
comparisons with The Muppets’ Christmas Carol, which only a few years earlier had also sought to bring the story of
the Carol to new and younger
audiences. However, that was done with wit, creativity, flair and imagination,
not qualities which are on display at any point in this bargain basement
destruction of a great story.
Whereas the Muppet team had a respect for the story even
while adopting a cheekily irreverent tone towards it at times, here almost all
of Dickens’s original dialogue is thrown out and replaced with more modern
language of a distinctly American flavour – for example, Scrooge telling the
child begging outside his door to “beat
it!” This presumably comes from a mistaken belief that modernising the
language somehow makes the story in some way ‘cooler’ or more relevant – if
children are going to enjoy the story of the Carol they either are or they aren’t, and getting rid of the best
of Dickens is not going to help you win them over, and will only serve to annoy
older viewers.
Just what established actors of high reputation such as
Curry, Goldberg and York were doing getting themselves involved in this mess is
anybody’s guess. I can’t believe it paid particularly well, unless of course
all the money went on the vocal talent rather than the visuals – the animation
is very cheap-looking. Even the Mister Magoo version of thirty-plus years beforehand looked as if it had more time
and effort put into it, and managed a more faithful version of the story.
There must have been something in the water getting
people making poor quality animated versions of A Christmas Carol around the turn of the century. I thought the 2001 version with Simon Callow and Kate Winslet was bad enough, but this one
really does plumb new depths. I’ve watched it so you don’t have to – don’t be
remotely tempted to give it a try yourself. It isn’t worth it, even for
curiosity’s sake.
In a nutshell:
Astonishingly poor. This is the first version of the
story I’ve watched for this blog that I’ve been tempted to give up on and stop
watching part way through.
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