A Christmas Carol - 2017, animation

Title:

A Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Short online animation
 
Country:
Turkey
 
Production company:
Adisebaba
 
Year:
2017 – first posted on YouTube on December 25^th that year
 
Length:
11 minutes
 
Setting:
Victorian-ish!
 
Background:
I came across this on YouTube when searching for a short version I could review today because I was a couple of Carols short on this year’s schedule – due to ones I’d planned to review either turning out not to exist, or not being available. I only had a very small amount of time to put today’s review together, pretty close to the wire, so when I was this one I decided that would do.
 
It’s had one-and-a-half million views on YouTube, so probably far, far more viewers than, say, some of the Amazon Prime films I’ve watched. The YouTube channel it’s from, “Fairy Tales and Stories for Kids”, lists itself as being US-based on its “About” page, but the company behind it, Adisebaba, is Turkish.

 
Cast and crew:
There are absolutely no credits on this whatsoever, so it’s pretty much impossible to find out who did what or anything about them. There appear to be just two performers doing all of the voices, however – one male and one female. At first I couldn’t place the accents – trying to work out if they were Americans trying to do English accents, or South Africans, or what. However, if they’re from people for whom English is a second language, then some of the weird emphasise and intonations throughout do make sense. Most of the story is narrated by the female performer, with occasional bits of dialogue given to the characters here and there.
 
Underdone Potato:
The first thing to note is that this is not, strictly-speaking, A Christmas Carol in the sense that it’s not set at Christmas. Instead, the story has been moved to New Year’s Eve and is more of A New Year’s Carol. The reasons for this are unclear. I could understand if the idea were to completely secularise the story – but on the other hand, the idea of New Year’s Eve in this form surely comes from a Christian calendar anyway, and Christmas (although not, admittedly, Christian) iconography such as Christmas trees still features. They also retain the title A Christmas Carol and released it on Christmas Day, so it’s all a bit weird.
 
As is the naming policy – hardly anybody is named apart from ‘Mr Scrooge’, with Bob becoming his ‘Helper’, as if he’s a live-in carer or something. Said ‘Helper’ wants to go early to buy his son a New Year’s present (what?), but Scrooge quite rightly points out he shouldn’t have left it to the last minute to do so.

Nephew Fred is just a nameless nephew here, and younger than in the book, too – just a child. Marley becomes Scrooge’s nameless ‘friend from work’, who has to ‘walk around the world in shackles’ as if it’s a charity world record attempt, with the whiff of a script that’s been put through Google’s auto-translate or something.

 

Some of the odd performance aspect comes in when Scrooge tells Marley to go, and he very casually replies, ‘Okay then, just wanted to warn you…’ Unusually, Marley – sorry, Scrooge’s ‘friend from work’ – actually tells Scrooge that the three spirits coming to visit him will show him visions of the past, the present and the future.
 
As in the dreadful 1997 version, Scrooge has a mean pet dog – rather pointlessly, as it doesn’t actually do anything.
 
Past:
The Ghost of ‘Last Year’s New Year’s Eve’ is a floating child, who takes Scrooge back to his own childhood. We see young Scrooge and his friends decorating a tree ‘like a Christmas tree’ (no, it is a Christmas tree), and then a party at his ‘first boss’s house’, this version’s equivalent of the Fezziwig party. It’s a weirdly-animated mix of 1950s and Victorian styles, and Scrooge is there with his wife – not named as Belle, of course. Then we see his wife leaving him later, when she’s realised he’s only obsessed with money.

Present:
The ‘Ghost of This Year’s New Year’s Eve’ appears to be a Ghost of Christmas Present tribute act, depicted very similarly to the traditional versions. We see Scrooge’s ‘Helper’ and his family, with a young son in a wheelchair, and Scrooge’s family – his nephew and nephew’s parents (Scrooge’s brother and his wife, we later learn) having ‘So much fun eating’. At the end of the section, we’re very casually told the Spirit informed Scrooge that it was ‘Time for him to die’ before revealing versions of Ignorance and Want, renamed as ‘Greedy and Unconcerned’ which seems a bit of a weird inclusion in such a stripped-down, young child-friendly version.

Yet to Come:
Another tribute act here, this time seemingly to the rapper Flava Flav, as a fairly traditional depiction of the ‘Ghost of the Future’ is wearing a clock around its neck. We’re shown Scrooge’s funeral, where he’s weirdly being buried right next to his Helper’s son’s grave.

What’s To-Day:
All the usual – Scrooge gets into the spirit of Christmas New Year’s Eve, sends toys and food to his Helper’s family, goes and has dinner with his own family, and starts splashing out money on charity.
 
Review:
This is a weird old thing. The animation isn’t actually bad at all, even though some of the design choices are a bit odd. And for an 11-minute version, they actually manage to include quite a large number of elements from the original story. However, the script just has so many odd bits and pieces to it, and the performances are so deeply unusual, that the whole thing comes across as being almost entirely computer-generated, voices and script and all.

That actually gives it some attraction, however. It’s so deeply odd that it’s actually quite funny. And at least it is fairly brief – although absolutely stuffed to the gills with adverts. I’d love to know the story behind the whole New Year’s Eve decision, and the oddness of the script, although sadly I doubt I ever will.
 
In a nutshell:
Actually worth watching for amusement value alone, if you have 11 minutes to spare.
 
Links:
YouTube

Mickey's Christmas Carol

Title:

Mickey’s Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Animated short film
 
Country:
USA
 
Production company:
Walt Disney Pictures
 
Year:
1983
 
Length:
26 minutes
 
Setting:
Fantasy Victorian

Background:
By the 1980s the idea of making short animated features for theatrical release had almost entirely disappeared. Even cartoon feature films were not at their height at this period, a few years away from the Disney Renaissance and then the rise of CGI with the likes of Toy Story in the 1980s.
 
Short cartoons at this point were almost entirely made for television broadcast, and although Mickey’s Christmas Carol did go out on television in the USA the following year, for its 1983 release it was made for the cinema. Presumably it was designed as an extra incentive to drive audiences to the re-releases of some existing Disney films – it was paired with a re-release of The Jungle Book in the UK in October, and The Rescuers in the USA in December.
 
Mickey Mouse is, of course, one of the most famous animated characters ever to have been created, the iconic emblem of Disney itself. This, however, was the first time in thirty years that a cartoon starring the character had been produced for the cinema. It was adapted from an audio version of the story which Disneyland Records had put out in 1974, and was a critical success – Mickey’s Christmas Carol was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1984.

Cast and crew:
There is only one original voice of a Disney character present in the line-up – Clarence Nash as Donald Duck, the final time he would voice the character. There is, however, also a first here – Alan Young as the voice of Scrooge McDuck, who it will surprise nobody to know takes the role of Ebenezer in this version. He would go on to voice McDuck for many years, most notably in the successful DuckTales series.
 
Burny Mattinson both produced and directed the short. He’d started work at Disney as an eighteen-year-old in the mail room in 1953, and worked his way up to become an animator and storyboarder. He would later get to direct a full-blown feature for Disney with The Great Mouse Detective in 1986, and helped to write several of their hugely successful 1990s classics.
 
He also collaborated on the story here, along with voice artist Young, actor and writer Alan Dinehart, writer Tony Marino, and animators Ed Gombert and Don Griffith.
 
Underdone Potato:
I was surprised to find that almost all of the characters are referred to by their actual character names from the book, rather than their Disney character names – an early indication of how surprisingly close to the source material this version runs.
 
Close to other versions at times, too, with Scrooge having a gag here about Cratchit having had a lump of coal the previous week which was also present in the Loony Tunes version of just a few years beforehand.

 
Donald Duck turns up in the role of Nephew Fred, relentlessly cheerful even when sent packing by Scrooge. Two characters I didn’t recognise but are apparently Disney versions of Ratty and Moley from The Wind in the Willows play the charitable gentlemen, who get equally short shrift from Scrooge, and there’s a version of the usual “you’ll want the whole day tomorrow,” exchange with Cratchit.
 
The one piece of ‘casting’ I didn’t feel really worked was Goofy as Jacob Marley – he just seems too stupid for this Scrooge to have wanted to have anything to do with. Perhaps he had inherited loads of money which Scrooge swindled him out of? Who knows, but there is a nice bit of animation in this sequence, as Marley’s shadow follows Scrooge up the stairs once he arrives home.
 
Past:
The Ghost of Christmas Past comes in the form of Jiminy Cricket of Pinocchio fame. There’s nothing of Scrooge’s schooldays; instead, we go straight to his time as an apprentice with ‘Fezzywig’.

As is probably even usual, Belle is at the party – although oddly, more formally known as ‘Isabelle’ in this version, and played by Daisy Duck. He see her and Scrooge dancing, but a very specific ten years later it all comes to an end as he repossesses the ‘Honeymoon cottage’ she’s been waiting for him with because her last payment was an hour late!
 
Present:
‘Willie the Giant’ – no, no idea – plays the Ghost of Christmas Present, and there’s some fun material of him being so big that he opens up the roofs of houses as if they were toys; Scrooge’s to climb out of, and others to look into.

 

As with other versions starring anthropomorphic animals, there are moral questions ignored by the presence of the likes of roast turkey and suckling pig among the Christmas goodies laid out on the ghost’s table when Scrooge first meets him.
 
Rather less of a Christmas feast is to be had at the Cratchits, the one scene the Spirit shows Scrooge – with a mute Minnie Mouse playing Mrs Cratchit, and two other Cratchit children in addition to Tiny Tim, who does get the ominous ‘I see a vacant seat…’ line hanging over him.
 
Yet to Come:
I didn’t recognise the cigar-smoking stock villain who plays the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, but evidently he is called Pete and is a regular adversary used across many Disney cartoons. The cigar-smoking is relevant as there’s quite a nice touch where the mist which accompanies him on his arrival is revealed to be the smoke from his cigar.

Again this is quite a brief segment, which Scrooge showing the Cratchits mourning the death of Tim. As happens in one or two other versions, they are mourning him not at home but at his gravestone – and we pan across to see that it’s in the same graveyard as that of Scrooge, who is cast down into it and evidently into the fires of hell, with a touch of the 1970 version perhaps.
 
What’s To-Day:
There’s no boy at the window for Scrooge to shout down to, but he does meet the two charitable gentlemen outside, and showers them with money. After meeting Fred in the street and assuring him he is going to come round for Christmas dinner, he goes and buys up a lot of toys and, in a change made in several versions, goes around to the Cratchits’ house. In a scene which the Muppet version would later so very similarly, he initially pretends to be cross with Cratchit, before revealing his transformation and all ends happily.

Review:
I was struggling to think whether or not I’d ever actually seen a Mickey Mouse cartoon before this, although I eventually remembered that we’d been shown Fantasia at primary school once, so that counts. Really, though, I think Mickey is far more famous as a corporate symbol than he is as an actual character – far more people can tell you what he looks like than can actually tell you anything about him.
 
It’s a bit unfair that he gets top – indeed, eponymous – billing here too, given that he’s at best a supporting character, too. Surprisingly hard to take seriously given his voice, as well. To my modern ears, it just sounds like someone doing a parodied impression of the way that Michael Jackson used to speak.

 
That aside, I enjoyed this a great deal more than I had expected to. It’s a surprisingly faithful retelling of the story – compressed, of course, but with many of the main moments represented, and certainly not shy of tackling the issues of death in the original which other more child-friendly versions often try and shy away from.
 
As you’d expect from Disney, too, the whole thing has a touch to class and polish to the production which lifts it way, way above dross like the 1997 and 2001 animated versions, for example. I’m sure if you’re more of a Disney fan than I am, you’ll also enjoy spotting all kinds of cameos and guest appearances along the way as well.
 
In a nutshell:
Surprisingly good – a nice little version of the story.
 
Links:
Wikipedia
IMDb

The Smurfs: A Christmas Carol

Title:

The Smurfs: A Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Animated straight-to-DVD short film
 
Country:
USA
 
Production company:
Sony Pictures Imageworks and Duck Studios, for Sony Pictures Animation
 
Year:
2011
 
Length:
22 minutes
 
Setting:
Fantasy
 
Background:
The titular Smurfs have a long history in the popular cultures of many countries around the world, having been created as comic book characters by the Belgian artist Peyo in the late 1950s. Their international popularity resulted in a 1980s animated TV series, and even when new stories were not appearing their distinctive appearance meant that they remained regular cultural touchstones.
 
Sony had released a Smurfs feature film in 2011, and this short special was commissioned to be released as an extra feature on the DVD release of the film in December that year. In a nice nod to the past, while the Smurfs are CGI as in the 2011 film in the framing story here, the main part of the story is done in traditional hand-drawn animated, harking back to the 1980s TV version.

Cast and crew:
Given the nature of its production, many of the same actors who provided voices for the 2011 cinema film are on duty again here. George Lopez stars as the Scrooge-like ‘Grouchy Smurf’; a stand-up comedian and American sitcom star, I have to confess he was not someone of whom I’d previously heard.
 
Probably the best-known names internationally are Hank Azaria as Garmagel and Anton Yelchin as ‘Clumsy Smurf’. Azaria has voiced a variety of regular characters in The Simpsons throughout that show’s history, while Yelchin found all-too-brief fame as Checkov in the Star Trek movie reboots, before his tragic early death in 2016.
 
On the production side, director Troy Quane gained his first such credit here, although he’d been working as an animator since the 1990s, including on various direct-to-video spin-offs from big animated feature films. Writer Todd Berger seems to have a primary career as an actor, but had credits on various animations since the year 2000 – like Quane, he’d also previously worked on such spin-offs from cinema animated cinema films.

Underdone Potato:
We begin with the CGI Smurfs singing their way through Christmas Eve and enjoying all the decorations around their village, until they get to Grouchy Smurf’s house and find he hasn’t decorated at all. Smurfette, in particular, reacts to this as if they have just come across the scene of a murder.
 
It transpires that, perhaps not particularly surprisingly given his name, Grouchy Smurf isn’t interested in celebrating Christmas. He hates everything about it, and that’s that. Rather than simply leaving him be, the other Smurfs decide that Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Grouchy being cheerful for the day and agreeing to put the Christmas star on top of their tree. Papa Smurf prepares a special potion to… Well, it’s not quite clear whether it gives him actual visions or this is all a dream or what. But it knocks him out, anyway.
 
Past:
When Grouchy Smurf awakes, he is in a world of traditional hand-drawn animation, and pleased to be looking a lot slimmer because of it. Smurfette arrives down his chimney as the Smurf of Christmas Past – also fulfilling the Marley role, as she informs Grouchy that she will be the first of the three spirits to visit him this evening.

She shows him a vision of a past Christmas when he used to enjoy it, only to become frustrated over the years by never receiving the hang-glider he always wanted, and only a new hat each and every year. He eventually becomes so frustrated that he snaps and declares his hatred of Christmas, also discarding the hat he’d been given, much to the upset of Papa Smurf who’d given it to him.
 
Present:
‘Brainy Smurf’ fills the role of ‘Smurf of Christmas Present’. He shows Grouchy that without him to put the star on the top of the tree, Clumsy Smurf had a go at doing it, and set off a chain reaction that ended up with the village tree and Christmas lights all destroyed.

Grouchy also learns that Papa Smurf made all the new hats he gave them every year personally, tailoring each one to the specific tastes of each individual Smurf. He regrets having been so dismissive of the hats he was given in the past.
 
Yet to Come:
‘Hefty Smurf’ – no, me neither – plays the role of Smurf of Christmas Future, initially in the traditional black robe although he soon takes the hood down and wears it rather more casually. He doesn’t show Grouchy very far into the future – just the next day, when the Smurf village is abandoned because they all went to the ‘West Forest’ to try and find a new tree to cheer Grouchy up.

While there, they were captured by the Smurfs’ enemy, Gargamel, who also captured Papa Smurf when he came to look for them. Grouchy realises the error of his ways, but too late as he goes tumbling into the bubbling vat of Gargamel’s cauldron…
 
What’s To-Day:
Grouchy wakes up, back in CGI land, and gets up early to restore all the Smurfs’ Christmas decorations. Everyone’s happy again and Grouchy even enjoys his new hat from Papa Smurf, who apologies for once again not getting him a hang-glider. While at the top of the tree putting the new star he’s made (put of his toy hang-glider, in a nice visual but not stated bit), he realises – or gambles – that if Papa Smurf knew he wanted a hang-glider, and he tailors each hat to its wearer, then his new hat must have some glider-like properties. In something of a brave move, he leaps from the tree, and it does indeed function as a sort of parachute.
 
I wouldn’t have risked it, though!

Review:
The Smurfs are one of those pop culture things that are big enough that I was aware of them and certain things about them, but I’d never actually watched or read any of their adventures before. Seeing them properly in action for the first time, I do have to say that they do rather come across as thinly-veiled knock-offs of the Seven Dwarves from Snow White.
 
There’s an interesting question raised about Smurfette, too. Even glossing over the fact she appears to be the only female member of the tribe, she talks more than once during this about them celebrating Christmas “as a family”. But it’s clear that more than one of the other Smurfs fancies her, and there’s even a gag about loads of them queuing up to kiss her when she’s standing under some mistletoe. Which makes you wonder about what kind of “family” they are, exactly…

 
I’m sure the change from CGI to traditional animation would have been a nice nostalgic touch for those who grew up with the older Smurf cartoons. However, while it is a nice idea to delineate between Grouchy’s ‘real’ and dream worlds, one drawback is that the contrast doesn’t really work in the CGI’s favour. I’m in no way anti-CGI, but here the traditional animation just seems much warmer and better-suited to the style of the Smurfs. They were originally comic book characters, after all.
 
In a nutshell:
Not a bad little production for a straight-to-DVD spin-off, but probably only really worth seeking out if you’re already a fan of the Smurfs.
 
Links:
Wikipedia
IMDb
 

Brer Rabbit's Christmas Carol

Title:
Brer Rabbit’s Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Straight-to-video animated special
 
Country:
USA
 
Production company:
Magic Shadows
 
Year:
1992
 
Length:
56 minutes
 
Setting:

Fantasy
 
Background:
Brer Rabbit (or more correctly it perhaps ought to be Br’er Rabbit) is a character from African-American folklore – a trickster who uses his wits to survive, with the writer John Chandler Harris later writing well-known versions of the stories of Brer Rabbit which had previously been passed down by oral tradition. Disney later adapted some of his stories into the film Song of the South in the 1940s, which given the content of the film has somewhat tarnished the reputation of both Harris and his version of the stories.

Brer Rabbit himself, however, remains a popular figure in American folk mythology and children’s stories. This particular interpretation, placing the character in an adaptation of the Carol, was made as a straight-to-video animation in 1992. The makers, a company called Magic Shadows, don’t appear to have done a great deal else and are difficult to find out much about.
 
Several of the cast and crew of Brer Rabbit’s Christmas Carol had been involved with a previous Brer Rabbit release, Brer Rabbit Tales, which had come out the preceding year. This was credited to Emerald City Productions, a Dublin-based company who’d produced a variety of animations based on well-known (and mostly handily out-of-copyright) stories since the late 1980s, although Emerald City had been sold in 1991 and its founders had concentrated on their work back in the USA.
 
Cast and crew:
Christopher Corey Smith stars as the eponymous Brer, and has had a long and extensive career in voice roles for all kinds of animations. This has included English-language dubs of various Japanese anime, and being the voice of the Joker for several Lego Batman computer games. Of the other three credited cast members, Ginny Tyler has the highest-profile credits, with voice roles in high-profile films such as The Sword in the Stone and Mary Poppins. David Kell had appeared in various on-screen roles in many US television shows, while Tom Hill has only a handful of voiceover credits to his name. Both Tyler and Hill had, however, appeared in the previous year’s Brer Rabbit Tales release.
 
That 1991 animation had been written and directed by Jean Mathieson and Al Guest, who were the founders and driving forces of Emerald City. Mathieson was a pioneering Canadian animator, and she and Guest had been working on animated productions together in their native Canada and in Hollywood before the decision to set up in Dublin. Evidently the previous year’s Brer Rabbit venture had been successful enough for them to be hired to create this follow-up, even though they no longer had their own company.
 
Underdone Potato:
This does have one rare and notable feature about it, in that there are actually no ‘real’ ghosts in this version. Much like the tale told in the Bugs Bunny version, this is actually a story of an animal – another rabbit, of course – organising a ‘fake’ version of A Christmas Carol to try and scare another character into changing his ways.
 
A Christmas Carol and Charles Dickens do actually exist in the fantasy world the animals inhabit – we learn that a benefit performance of the story is being put on at the local playhouse on Christmas Day to raise money for poor ‘Timmy Mouse’, who’s ill. Which actually raises some odd questions about the story having ‘real world’ parallels with what’s happening in the lives of the animas, but let’s not go too deeply into that! It also doesn’t seem to be the best-organised performance in the world, given that it’s happening the next day but Brer Porcupine is still able to just stroll up to Brer Rabbit and be casually given the part of Tiny Tim.

The Scrooge analogue here is Brer Fox, a local wood merchant who’s generally mean-spirited and has also tricked his rather stupid Bob Cratchit figure, Brer Bear, out of his home so that he can turn it into a goldmine. Overhearing this, Brer Rabbit organises a meeting of all the townsfolk, where they arrange to trick Brer Fox with a haunting.
 
So they sneak off to Fox’s house in the middle of the night, using an array of props and costumes and the vocal talents of Brer Magpie to convince him he’s being haunted. Brer Rabbit (and a carved pumpkin head on a stick…) takes a sort of Master of Ceremonies role as a generic Christmas ghost, but there is an appearance from a Marley equivalent in the form of shadow hand puppetry and Magpie’s voice convincing Fox that his old partner Brer Wolf is back from the grave.
 
There’s also a weird B-plot element introduced, were dumb old Bear is – for reasons which are never even attempted to be explained – heading over to Fox’s in the middle of the night to give him his Christmas present. Seeing the ‘ghosts’ through the window he decides to try and help save Fox from them (as he’s stupidly loyal), and ends up heading off to the swamp to get some anti-ghost potions from Brer Gator.
 
I’m not quite sure what Dickens would have made of all that…
 
Past:
In an element of the script which really stretches the credulity of things to breaking point – even within the confines of the fictional universe we’re in, and even bearing in mind the age of the audience – Fox hides under his bedsheets as his bed is ‘flown’ to the past. He doesn’t question how long the journey takes as his bed is then carried into town to the playhouse, so that the haunting can continue with various visions being presented to him.

For some reason, even when he emerges from under the covers Fox doesn’t at all notice that he’s at the Playhouse, and detects no sign of the full audience following proceedings out on the other side of a curtain he’s concealed behind. There is a nod to Dickens with the brief appearance of the Ghost of Christmas Past – under a white sheet – holding a candle, but only one brief ‘vision’ shown. This is reasonably clever in the sense that they have thought about how you might fake such a vision, with Fox being shown a view from behind of himself at school, so the face isn’t revealed and he recognises his old school uniform.
 
Present:
Another fairly brief affair, we learn that Timmy Mouse is gravely ill, although we don’t actually see Timmy, nor any of the Mouse family at all. The Ghost is another white sheet job, although briefly doubted by Fox as it’s wearing glasses, and he claims that ghosts would not need glasses due to the fact that they are dead.

There’s an interesting question raised when he remembers being brought chicken soup by Timmy Mouse when he was ill the previous year. Given that the whole cast of characters are talking, sentient animals of various sorts, does that not also include chickens? And therefore the idea of chicken soup raises something of a moral question…?
 
Yet to Come:
Another sheet here, but a black one as per the usual state of affairs. Fox is shown a mocked-up grave for Brer Bear, and told that he died of pneumonia after being turfed out of his home for Fox’s goldmine. Fox is then also shown a vision of his own grave.
 
While all of this has been going on, Bear has befriended old Brer Gator – who seems almost to be portrayed as some sort of sex offender, living alone, shunned by society, trying to tempt children into his swamp – and having followed the tracks from Fox’s house to the playhouse, tries to charge in to the rescue.
 
Fox gets knocked out, the playhouse gets destroyed and Bear carries Fox, still in his bed, safely away back home.

What’s To-Day:
A surprisingly lengthy section, this, not just the quick tie-up that it normally is in most versions. Fox wakes up a reformed character, and strolls into town giving the compliments of the season to all. However, when he meets Brer Rabbit moping about outside the wrecked playhouse, Rabbit despairs that he’s been too clever for his own good this time, as there can now be no benefit performance for Timmy Mouse.
 
He confesses all to Brer Fox, who instead of being angry is touched and thrilled that everyone in the town would go to such an effort to try and reform him. He showers Rabbit with cash for Timmy, and arranges for everyone to be treated to a slap-up Christmas Dinner at the community hall.
 
Meanwhile, as payment for his help with the ‘ghosts’, Brer Bear has gone to Christmas Dinner at lonely old Gator’s house. A turkey is being prepared, which again raises those same interesting moral questions as the chicken soup! Fox gets the wrong end of the stick about where Bear has gone and thinks his friend has agreed that Gator can have him for dinner, and tries to go and rescue him. However, all’s well that ends well and everyone goes back to the hall, with Gator playing the part of Father Christmas.
 
Just don’t leave him alone with the kiddies…

Oddly, there is a song over the end credits which tells the entire story of everything you’ve just watched all over again in musical form.
 
Review:
This isn’t the worst version of the Carol you’ll ever see, although even keeping in mind its child-focused basis there are still some pretty big flaws. The script is at times clunky and could have done with another edit or two – the overlong ‘bed journey’ into the ‘past’ section being probably the biggest structural problem. But in terms of the dialogue there are also a lot of ugly bits, particularly when characters who already know one another’s names refer to each other as ‘Brer Woodchuck’ and ‘Miss Possum’. The constant ‘Brer’ this, that and the other does get a bit wearing, too.
 
Speaking of Miss Possum, though, there is a nice running gag about her fantasies of ultra-violence against Brer Fox. Although after all that build-up, it only makes it all the more disappointing when, having finally got her chance near the end, she only gives him a single whack on the head wither her umbrella.

Miss Possum - the star of the show!

Perhaps surprisingly for a version like this, having acknowledged the ‘existence’ of Dickens in this world, they do take a few opportunities to include his actual words, with characters reading some of their ‘lines’ from a copy of the book when carrying out the fake haunting. Although this is rather undermined by Fox pointing out on these occasions how ‘funny’ the ghosts talk.
 
The animation is generally of a fairly decent standard, although I was conscious of quite a lot of silhouette work, which presumably helps save money and time. And there was also one very sloppy moment when Bear is having tea with Gator, where after Gator has poured it the drops of tea from the spout of the teapot hang frozen in the air for a few moments.

In a nutshell:
Not especially worth seeking out, but judged purely in terms of animal-starring animated versions, it’s leagues ahead of crap like the 2006 CGI version.
 
Links:
IMDb

Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol

Title:

Bugs Bunny’s Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Short segment of an animated television special
 
Country:
USA
 
Production company:
DePatie–Freleng Enterprises, for Warner Brothers Television and CBS
 
Year:
1979 (first broadcast on the CBS network in the USA on November 27^th that year)
 
Length:
8 minutes
 
Setting:
Fantasy Victorian
 
Background:
Bug Bunny is, of course one of the most famous American cartoon characters ever to have been created, having appeared in animations of various lengths for Warner Brothers since the 1930s. In those earliest days the cartoons would have been designed to form part of a cinema programme, although by this stage they were of course being made for television.
 
Bugs Bunny’s Christmas Carol wasn’t actually an entirely separate entity in and of itself; instead it was one of three cartoons which comprised Bug Bunny’s Looney Christmas Tales. These featured various of the Looney Tunes stable of cartoon characters in assorted seasonal situations, with the Christmas Carol segment forming the first of the trio.

Cast and crew:
The famous voice of Bugs Bunny, Mel Blanc, is present and correct here, not just as Bugs but as… well, pretty much the entire cast, really!
 
Director Frez Freleng was a veteran of the Looney Tunes stable and had been handling Bugs Bunny cartoons for over thirty years by this point, so he certainly knew what he was doing. Freleng also co-wrote the script, along with Scots scriptwriter John W. Dunn and fellow animation veteran Tony Benedict.
 
Underdone Potato:
Given that this is a very short version of the story, you would expect them to speed through everything very quickly – and indeed they do – but despite that, the opening section is the one lingered on the longest. Probably because it has all the set-up and you only then need to go a quick pay-off, I suppose.
 
Yosemite Sam is cast in the role of Scrooge – ‘Sam Scrooge’, evidently, given a line he has near the end – with Porky Pig as Bob Cratchit. Porky asks for another lump of coal to put in the stove in his office and is of course abruptly refused. Mind you, he’d probably be a bit less old if he put some trousers on.

Put some bloody trousers on, Bob!

 
Bugs Bunny – who’s also the frame narrator of the whole thing – turns up as a sort of Fred character, although he’s never explicitly introduced as such. After failing to convince Scrooge of the need to celebrate Christmas, he’s kicked out of the office. He goes for dinner at Bob’s, where we briefly see Bob’s mostly-porcine family – except for Tiny Tim, played here by Tweety Pie and thus raising some awkward questions about what Mrs Cratchit has been up to. Not the last piggy Mrs Cratchit we’ll ever see in an adaptation, of course.
 
As happens occasionally in other versions, Cratchit is actually fired by Scrooge, and is to have his home repossessed too. Bugs decides that enough is enough, and hatches a plan to change Scrooge’s ways, sneaking into the house Sam Scrooge shares with Sylvester the cat. (Who he’s actually surprisingly nice to, letting him sleep in the bed with him!)

There is a suggestion of Marley as Bug dresses up in a ghostly sheet and chains, although Scrooge never sees this and only hears the noise of them. What’s interesting about this version is that there are no ‘real’ ghosts – Bugs explicitly states to the audience that he’s going to play a trick on Scrooge by only making him think there are.
 
Yet to Come:
As there are no ghosts, there are no visions, and there is also only one spirit – the ‘Ghost of Christmas’, combining all three spirits into one as was also done in 1908 and 1910 silent versions. Although with a sheet covering his head and Bugs occasionally stretching his arm out to point, the one he most resembles is indeed Yet to Come. It’s perhaps no surprise that the structure of this adaptation should have something in common with those from the silent era, given that it is similarly short.

As Bugs can’t show Sam any visions, he instead makes a threat, instead – telling Sam that he will meet the guy in the red suit, but not Santa. Scrooge asks if he means ‘downstairs’, and Bugs as the Ghost of Christmas confirms that he does, which panics Sam into pledging to change his ways and be nice to people.
 
What’s To-Day:
To show how great he now is, Sam even rushes to his wardrobe to find and dress up in a Santa suit – although why he owned such an item in the first place is anybody’s guess! It’s all a bit showy and shallow, his ‘redemption’, clearly not a case of him actually wanting to change his ways, but simply wanting to put on the appearance of being a reformed character to avoid having to go to hell! Still, he does make Porky Bob a partner in the business, thus at least giving him some sort of financial security!

Review:
Obviously it’s hard to make much of this, given how sleight it all is. I have to confess that I don’t remember ever being a particular fan of the Warner Brothers cartoon stable, even when I was a child. I certainly remember them being on television a lot, and I certainly watched them, but they were the kind of thing I watched more than enjoyed. Something to sit through as filler while you waited for the ‘proper’ children’s programmes.
 
I realise of course that’s rather unkind, and that these are characters which resonate with a huge number of people who hold them in high affection. And there’s obviously no doubt whatsoever that there’s a great deal of skill involved here, both on the animation side and from Mel Blanc doing a tour-de-force on vocal duties and making everyone sound sufficiently different.
 
It’s difficult to rate it particularly highly as an adaptation of the Carol, but of course there’s nothing at all wrong with existing fictional universes adopting the story to make their own parodies and versions. Indeed, it’s a tribute to the power of the story that so many of them do.

In a nutshell:
If you’re a fan of the Warner Brothers cartoon characters I’m sure you’ll enjoy it very much.
 
Links:
Wikipedia
IMDb

The Stingiest Man in Town - 1978, animation

Title:
The Stingiest Man in Town
 
Format:
Animated television special
 
Country:
USA / Japan
 
Production company:
Rankin/Bass Productions and Topcraft, for NBC
 
Year:
1978 (first shown on the NBC network in the USA on December 23^rd that year)
 
Length:
50 minutes
 
Setting:
Fantasy Victorian – a London where talking and singing animals are unremarkable, and everyone speaks with American accents
 
Background:
The Stingiest Man in Town had originally been a live-action – and, indeed, live broadcast – television production for NBC back in 1956, and while not being as big a success as other stage or feature film musicals of the time, it did receive a soundtrack release. 22 years later, NBC commissioned the well-known Rankin/Bass animation house to make this new version for Christmas 1978. Rankin/Bass were best known for their festive specials, although they usually worked in stop-motion animation rather than traditional drawn animation as here. Perhaps because of this, for The Stingiest Man in Town they collaborated with the Japanese animation house Topcraft, with whom they had an existing relationship from several other such collaborations throughout the 1970s – including an adaptation of the poem The Night Before Christmas broadcast on NBC in 1974.

Cast and crew:
Starring as the voice of Scrooge is Walter Matthau, best known at the time for his curmudgeonly starring role in the film The Odd Couple. You’d think that in an animated version they wouldn’t necessarily need to get someone else in to play the young Scrooge, but perhaps they felt Matthau’s voice wouldn’t convince as a younger man, so Robert Morse – later to be a star of the 21^st century TV drama Mad Men – plays young Ebenezer. Weirdly, Matthau’s then-teenage son Charles – who is in the voice cast in another, minor part – didn’t get the role, which you’d think might have made more sense if they were having him in it anyway.
 
Happy Days star Tom Bosley plays B. A.H. Humbug, Esquire (get it?) a sort of narrator figure who guides us through the action. Paul Frees, who was a stalwart of animation voices over many years for Disney and others, is both the Ghost of Christmas Past and Christmas Present, while Austrian-born movie veteran Theodore Bikel voices Marley.

While the songs are adapted from the original, the script is a new one from Romeo Muller, who was a Rankin/Bass regular for their Christmas specials. Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin themselves directed the American side of things, with Katsuhisa Yamada directing the work of the Japanese animation team.
 
Underdone Potato:
There is a very interesting little tweak at the start here, in that the story begins post-redemption – our humbug narrator tells us that Scrooge is known to be the kindest and most generous man in town. However, they’re clearly a bit over-delighted with this conceit, as he then rather archly asks if we’re surprised by this, before explaining that it wasn’t always the case. To underline the point, we even have Scrooge referred to as the “Devil’s stooge!” (Although this, presumably, was more for want of a rhyme…)
 
I thought for a moment we were going to cut almost all of the pre-Marley material altogether, but it seems jumping to Scrooge in bed is just a little tease ahead into the opening titles. Once those are over and done with, we’re back into the offices of Scrooge & Marley for a visit from Fred, who as well as serenading his uncle also brings him some presents.

I never knew Marley was such a bighead...

 
Bob Cratchit is surprisingly over-confident in this version, being so bold as to say to his employer that he, “didn’t think he’d have to ask” to have Christmas Day off. Scrooge then pulls a bit of emotional blackmail, pretending to be hard-up and unable to spare the money himself, so Bob says he doesn’t have to pay him or Christmas Day.
 
As was the case in the original version of The Stingiest Man in Town, Scrooge has actually already gone to bed before Marley appears and warns him of the coming of the three spirits. Perhaps surprisingly, before Jacob takes his leave he does a bit from the book not included in all that many versions – showing Scrooge the other spirits hopelessly wandering the world outside his window.
 
Past:
Quite a short section this, and with the Spirit rather different to the norm – he keeps the flame-like characteristics of Dickens’s description, but as with the original 1956 version of The Stingiest Man in Town he is depicted as an old man.

We only really get two scenes with Belle and that’s it. The first one does the common thing of bringing her to the Fezziwigs’ Christmas Party, although the party isn’t named as such. Indeed, we don’t actually really see anything much of the party at all – instead, Ebenezer and Belle go outside to cool down from the warmth within, and debate whether or not they can afford to get married.
 
We then get the first Belle scene from the book, where she releases him from his obligation. Interestingly, it’s sort-of merged with a version of the second Belle scene – but instead of Scrooge seeing her actual husband and children, he sees a vision of what might have been had they married and had children of their own.
 
There’s a suggestion that perhaps Belle didn’t end up happily married as she does in the book – we are given a brief glimpse of her as a rather sad and lonely-looking old woman, mirrored with the present-day Scrooge in a split screen, with the hint perhaps being that he didn’t only ruin his own life, he ruined hers, too.

Poor old Belle... Literally, in the latter case

 
There’s a nice moment when Scrooge wakes up after snuffing out the ghost, and he is reaching across and using a snuffer to put out a real candle on his bedside table.
 
Present:
The Spirit looks even more Father Christmas-like than usual here – he already has a white hair and beard, so doesn’t age across his time with Scrooge. This is probably very deliberate, as there is a moment when Santa Claus is being sung about when we see a shot of him with his green cloak turned to red, linking them very much as one and the same figure with a tad less subtlety than usual.

 
We get the two main visits of the section – to Bob’s house, and then to Fred’s. One thing that struck me about the animation here is that the Cratchit children, or at least the boys, really do have grotesquely thin legs. It’s a wonder any of them can stand up without the things snapping beneath them.
 
There’s a very syrupy song that slows the whole thing down into a kind of second-rate version of Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, and then when we get to Fred’s there’s only a brief bit of the party before we get into a very religious mode, with stained glass-style shots of the Nativity and the same reminder of the Christianity of Christmas as in the 1956 version. Still a good point about the gold being a pointless present for a king, though.

Oddly, it’s after the visit to Fred’s that Scrooge asks whether Tiny Tim will live. This then all gets sidetracked into another rather mawkish and forgettable song.
 
Yet to Come:
Quite a brief rendition, here. There’s the tiniest glimpse of the Old Joe segment, and then the Spirit – depicted in traditional fashion – shows Scrooge his gravestone. We also get a revisit from the spirits Scrooge was shown outside of his window, and the Devil himself makes a brief cameo appearance – harking back, I suppose, to that earlier line about Scrooge being his stooge.

 
What’s To-Day:
Scrooge not only sends the boy to go and buy the turkey, he also gets him to deliver it to the Cratchits – not even having to give the boy their address. In a scene which evokes memories of the 1970 musical, Scrooge then heads off to the toyshop, although unlike in that film he has the toys sent to the Cratchits, rather than delivering them himself.

He then heads off to Fred’s party, and the next day we have the usual closing scene of him playing his little joke on Bob. We then also get various little glimpses of Scrooge handing out piles of gold coins to people with abandon – including a pair who I assume to be the two charitable gentlemen, who didn’t feature in their usual place near the start. The Ghost of Christmas Present did refer to Scrooge’s “surplus population” remark, however, so I wonder if perhaps they were originally included but then cut for time.
 
Review:
As with the original live television version of 1956, there are a few nice songs – the opening number especially, with its lines about a Christmas story written long ago. But few of them are as memorable or striking as the biggest hits of the 1970 or Muppet versions. Those in the Christmas Present section particularly transgress what’s sure a cardinal sin of musicals – slowing the whole story down rather than moving it along.

Aside from that, though, there’s little that you could say was really bad here. The animation’s of a high standard, and there are some very interesting touches like the old, sad Belle. It’s certainly miles ahead of many if not most of the other animated versions I have so far covered here on the blog. But it’s difficult to say it’s particularly great, either.
 
The 1956 version was impressive because of its nature as a live action musical done as a live television production, and managing to pull that off. No matter the skill involved – and there certainly is that – this animated version can never quite match that, really.
 
In a nutshell:
Not at all bad, but even if you want a child-friendly version there are better ones out there.
 
Links:
Wikipedia
IMDb