A Christmas Carol - 2019, film

Title:
A Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Digitally-released feature film for online streaming
 
Country:
Ireland
 
Production company:
Sallybrook Productions Limited
 
Year:
2019 (premiered at Fermoy in Ireland in December, although released online in 2020)
 
Length:
77 minutes
 
Setting:
London, 1795 (for no apparent reason, and despite everyone having Irish accents)
 
Background:
Only a couple of days ago we had the blog’s very first Irish adaptation of A Christmas Carol, and here we have the second. This has a number of similarities with that 2012 version, aside from its country of origin – it’s a low-budget feature designed for online release, now available through the Amazon Prime streaming service, and it seems to have been very much the brainchild of a single driving force behind the scenes.
 
There may also have been some UK funding involved somewhere along the way, however, with the film being listed on the British Council’s website, with the production company having an address in Wolverhampton. Certainly there was English involvement from students at De Montfort University in Leicester, who created the computer-generated street scenes and other CGI elements present through the film.

I wouldn't be that proud of it if I were you...

Cast and crew:
Director Girish Patel is a teacher by trade, at a school in Fermoy in Cork, where the film had its world premiere at the Fermoy Youth Centre, having also been entirely shot at various locations around Cork. Also a musician, Patel provided the music as well as also writing the screenplay and being co-credited as editor and production designer, too – the latter two alongside producer Carmel Barrett, also a Cork native.
 
Patel and Barrett also both appear in the production, perhaps showing the rather limited pool they had to cast from. Barrett has an odd role as a nun who’s a combination of other characters from the original story, while Patel is credited as the Ghost of Christmas Present. I say credited because I’m pretty sure he also has another role as Marley’s ghost, although that part isn’t listed on the closing credits.

John Brett - possibly the very worst 'actor' in all of Ireland

 
The rest of the all-Irish cast is led by John Brett, Patrick Murphy and Niamh Murphy, about any of whom it’s difficult to find out a great deal. Niamh Murphy does appear to have done a fair bit of stage work in Ireland, however, and has appeared in other short and low-budget films – she’s also by some margin the best performer in this, as the Ghost of Christmas Past, although I have to admit that’s not saying much.
 
Underdone Potato:
The film begins with a black-and-white scene, which a caption tells us is set in London, 1795. I therefore assumed – and spent a large chunk of the film assuming – that this was some sort of prologue, designed to show us some incident in Scrooge’s early life which led to his later temperament, and that the Scrooge and Marley sign seen was perhaps meant to suggest that their fathers had also been in business together. But no – it’s later revealed that this is simply when the film is set. The young boy playing a recorder who I thought was the young Scrooge actually turns out to be a substitute for the book’s young carol singer outside Scrooge’s office.

"Funny thing is, my father was a nun..."

There’s a bit of opening narration, although not taken from the book, and given in this instance by Bob Cratchit. Once we’re into Scrooge’s counting-house, the pattern is set for the film whereby pretty much everything is shot in a sequence of very tight close-ups – presumably to save on having to construct too much of a set behind each character.
 
Producer Carmel Barrett turns up as a nun who is a combination of both Fred and the two charitable gentlemen from the book, having a combination of both their conversations with Scrooge – although Fred’s lines about having got married because he fell in love are changed to the nun having taken her calling because she fell in love with Jesus Christ.
 
‘Jesus Christ’ were certainly among the words going through my mind while I was watching this, I can tell you…

No, it turns out that Lucy isn't the dog...

 
We follow Bob home, where we learn that instead of a plethora of Cratchit children, there is just one – ‘Little Lucy’, who takes the place of Tiny Tim in this version. Although Bob’s journey home is so appallingly directed that you can be forgiven for making the mistake of thinking that ‘Little Lucy’ is actually the name of the family’s pet dog.

 
Back in his rooms, Scrooge begins to experience Marley’s haunting presence – without the usual doorknocker which kicks things off. Instead, in this instance it’s replaced by… a novelty teapot. I suppose you have to hand it to them for making use of what was available to them, although why Scrooge had such a thing in his bedroom is, unsurprisingly, not delved into.

Even the novelty teapot is horrified at the idea of being in this film

 
Marley himself only appears in extreme close up, seemingly holding some very small chains across his face, just to make sure that he seems suitably ridiculous.

Past:
The Ghost of Christmas Past is a young woman in this version, played by Niamh Murphy – who is not only by far and away the best actor in this thing, she’s possibly the only person with any lines in it who can actually act at all.

Poor Niamh. You're better than this!

 
The only vision of the past Scrooge is given is a variation of the school scene, and his visit from Fan. Scrooge’s father is made out to be a much harder and more abusive character by the dialogue in this version. That’s not unusual, but what is unusual is Scrooge actually refusing to leave to go home with Fan. Instead he sends her away, before pulling out a recorder – ‘Aha!’ thought I, ‘this is where the callback to the prologue comes in…’ But no, it’s then explained that this just makes the old Scrooge think of the young recorder player outside his office earlier.
 
Then the whole thing really goes off the rails as the Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge… A vision of the future. And not even his future. For reasons which pass understanding, here is inserted a very slow short film about a boy who needs a heart transplant – for yes, this is a hospital in London some 200-odd years in Scrooge’s future. It’s supposedly there to teach Scrooge a lesson about being grateful for what he has, but is clearly only here because it’s a short film Patel had either already made or wanted to make, and this was his Trojan Horse for getting it out there.

No. I have absolutely no idea, either

 
I mean, it literally has no connection to anything that is going on. It’s as if something’s gone wrong with the streaming service and it’s started randomly showing you another film partway through. It’s shot very weirdly, too, with only music, a bit of voiceover and intertitles like a silent film. Scrooge, rather than boggling at this far-off future world of the 21^st century – or railing at how crap this all is – solemnly seems to understand its message.
 
Present:
Ye Gads, what can I say about the Ghost of Christmas Present? It’s… It’s… Well, it’s director Girish Patel in yet another extreme close-up, with a Father Christmas hat and a very cheap-looking false white beard. That’s literally it.

There’s only one vision shown, but at least we don’t have to put up with a random short film this time. We see Bob’s house, with his mute wife and Little Lucy. Patrick Murphy as Bob is clearly the only performer of a member of the Cratchit family who can actually be trusted to speak.
 
There is a line about the Spirit having seemed to age, but no discernible ageing has taken place with the character whatsoever. In what’s probably the best bit of direction – maybe the only really competent bit – in the entire film, Patel does make a half-decent stab at Ignorance and Want, but frankly this far into the film you’re probably quite willing to ignore the Spirit’s warning and allow mankind to head to its doom.
 
Yet to Come:
In a graveyard, Scrooge is confronted by a Spirit wearing what looks more like a rain mac than a cloak, but at least looks broadly right. It’s probably hard to go too far wrong with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

Scrooge sees a body being put under a shroud, with hair which gives away the fact that the body looks nothing like him, and yet is clearly supposed to be him. We also go to the Cratchits’, where Bob is mourning the death of Little Lucy – but then declares that hey, it’s Christmas, so they’d better cheer up, right?
 
“I see my name upon the grave!” declares Scrooge, surprisingly convinced by what appears to be a close-up of a mocked-up gravestone on a piece of paper. All of this attempt at Dickens, however, is merely the build-up to another lesson of a vision for Scrooge. Yes, it’s another completely unrelated short film, this time about a nun – another nun! – in Pennsylvania in 1915. Basically, it’s a long-winded tale designed to teach us, and Scrooge, that ‘everything happens for a reason’, but is clearly just another flimsy excuse for Patel to shove in a completely unrelated short film idea.

What’s To-Day:
There’s no boy below the window in this version. He seems to have been replaced by… um… A robin. Which Scrooge looks at and instantly deduces it’s Christmas Day, before talking to himself about sending a turkey to the Cratchits.

It's no surprise that one of the best shots in the film is a piece of stock footage

He bumps into the nun from earlier, and offers he a charitable donation in the form of a wadge of notes. There’s no Fred in this, so of course nobody for him to go and visit for Christmas dinner, so instead we cut to the usual Boxing Day ending of him playing his little trick on Bob. Still, at least Smoking Bishop retains its namecheck here, which it doesn’t usually.
 
As has been done elsewhere – in the 2009 Disney version, for example – it’s Bob who delivers the closing narration. This makes sense given that as mentioned there’s no Fred, who is more often the choice for that in screen adaptations where such a thing is present.
 
Review:
It seems I was far too hasty in declaring the 2019 BBC version as the worst ever adaptation of the Carol. Just over a week after I posted that review, this has come along and taken its crown.
 
I mean, where do I start…?
 
It is bad on every conceivable level. Performance-wise, with the honourable exception of Niamh Murphy and perhaps Mary Anne Brassil who takes the lead in the second random short film, it’s abysmal. It’s not simply that these people are bad actors. It’s that most of them barely seem to be acting at all. John Brett as Scrooge goes through the whole thing as if reading all of his lines off large cue-cards just out of shot – which, for all I know, he may well have been.
 
It’s bad structurally. I mean, I’ll repeat it if it seems unbelievable – two, completely unrelated short films set in times and / or places completely removed from the story, with utterly unrelated characters, are shoe-horned in on the very flimsiest of pretexts. Both made almost as if they’re silent films, too. It’s just weird.
 
The writing is bad. Where Patel adapts Dickens lines, he sometimes doesn’t seem to actually understand what they mean, and it can be almost as if he shortened some to save time or space without considering the effect it would have. For example, the line in the closing passage from the book about Scrooge becoming as a good a friend, “…as the good old city knew,” is rendered here as, “as good a friend as the good old city.”
 
You what…? Friends with lots of cities, are you, Girish…?
 
The direction is awful. There is no shame in having to do close-ups to avoid showing too much of what is or isn’t in the background. But there is some really appalling random cutting between shots, and some deeply confusing choices that leave you bemused as to what’s going on – such as the prologue that isn’t a prologue, and Bob’s walk home accompanied by shots of the family’s pet dog as he talks about Lucy.

Another example of the shockingly poor direction and lack of
attention to detail. So Scrooge got up at half past four, did he? When
it would be dark morning or afternoon in December? And why's the clock
ringing if it's not on a quarter-hour...?

 
The production is poor. For almost anything that isn’t a close-up we get CGI shots of streets and even the other side of a room, and while I’m sure the De Montfort students did their best, it all looks very cheap. Indeed, at times the move from low-rent CGI into appalling performances leaves the whole thing feeling bit like a series of overlong scenes from a computer game.
 
There are all sorts of random odd decisions or just general examples of poor technique, too. What looks like an editing software programme’s ‘snow’ effect being laid across outdoor scenes. Appalling transitions such as cuts to black which will make you wonder whether your TV is on the blink. It doesn’t even seem to be rendered properly – I tried it on different browsers which were displaying other videos properly, and every time the film had a stuttering, dropped-field sort of effect which I found very off-putting. The sound is often very poor too, with random changes in volume and effects on voices coming and going.
 
The music is also pretty dreadful. Much of the score consists of versions of presumably mostly handily-out-of-copyright Christmas carols, all sounding as if they’re being played on the tinniest, squeakiest Casio keyboard possible.
 
I was quite hard on the 2012 Irish version I reviewed earlier this month. But really, it’s light years ahead of this mess. This really is very, very bad indeed, and I implore you to think again very quickly if you are even slightly tempted to ever watch it.
 
In a nutshell:
Not just the new holder of the title of ‘worst version of the Carol I have yet seen’. It may well also be the worst film I have ever seen, full stop.
 
Links:
Amazon Prime (But really, don’t bother. It’s not worth it!)
IMDb