A Christmas Carol - 2020, film

Title:
A Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Live action feature film
 
Country:
UK
 
Production company:
Frith Street Films
 
Year:
2020
 
Length:
96 minutes
 
Setting:
Fantasy Victorian
 
Background:
This is, I feel reasonably certain of saying, a unique version of the Carol. There is a framing set-up at the start and end which is conventionally acted and performed, of some children putting on a kind of puppet show version of the Carol with cut-out paper figures from newspapers and illustrations, for an audience of presumably their mother and father and a younger sibling. An older woman, perhaps their grandmother, narrates.
 
But the main action of the story and the majority of the film takes place ‘within’ their model theatre stage. Live-action performances among dioramas of cut-out newspaper clippings and Leech-like illustrations and cardboard walls. And these live-action performers do not speak any words – they glide and move but all the vocal performances are given by others, mixed with the narration. The whole effect is rather like watching a narrated ballet with voiceovers for the different characters, or visuals put to a radio play.

 

This did, apparently, get a cinema release in the UK for Christmas 2020, and I think I do remember toying with the idea of going to see it. But cinemas were of course struggling in the pandemic at the time, with big releases having been pushed back to 2021, social distancing in place and not many people yet keen to get fully back into the swing of going out and gathering together. So I doubt this did much business or was seen by a huge number of people on its original release.
 
Cast and crew:
Each of the characters, outside of the framing set-up, has two performers – a dancer and a voice artist. So, for example, Scrooge is seen being performed on-screen as a dancer by Michael Nunn, but all of his dialogue is delivered by Simon Russell Beale, as Nunn’s lips never move to it, nor do any of the other characters to their voice actors – this is not a mime show.
 
The voice cast is, I think, much better known than the dancing one. Beale is one of those actors distinguished in the profession – knighted, even – with a wide and respected body of work but not really a household name as such; more of a kind of ‘oh, him!’ type when you see him in things. I recall him mostly as Widmerpool in the Channel 4 version of A Dance to the Music of Time, for which he won a BAFTA.
 
Elsewhere, Bob Cratchit is voiced by Martin Freeman, known of course for his TV roles as Tim in the original BBC version of The Office and Watson in Sherlock, and on the big screen for his starring role in the Peter Jackson Hobbit films. Oscar-winner Daniel Kaluuya voices the Ghost of Christmas Present, while two-time Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan gets quite a high billing for quite a small part as Belle. Andy Serkis, a year on from his appearance in the 2019 television version, gets a credit on a more traditional telling here, this time in the role of the voice of Marley. The biggest name actually appearing on screen is Siân Phillips, as the narrating grandmother figure in the wraparound sequences, and in voiceover form throughout.

The film is directed by Northampton-born brother-and-sister team Jacqui and David Morris, with David providing the screenplay. They began their filmmaking career on documentaries, being BAFTA nominated for their production about war photographer Don McCullin. Together they run Frith Street Films, which was the production company for this version of the Carol.

 
Underdone Potato:
Having Phillips as the narrator means that, much like Gonzo in the Muppet version, we get to keep much of Dickens’ prose from the book which would otherwise have been lost in a more conventional screen adaptation, so that’s a good move. However, there is one change near the very start which gives me pause. The underlining that it must be understood that Marley is dead at the start “…or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate,” is here changed to “nothing good,” which I’d suggest is a rather different thing.
 
It's an interesting change because it seems to me to switch the meaning of the line from being that you have to understand Marley is dead or else the story itself will not have its wondrous magic, to meaning you cannot take the good and decent message of the story unless you understand that. It is, as I say, an interesting thing to do and I wish I could ask David Morris why he’d decided to make that particular change.

 

Marley is quite a sinister figure here, so much so that there’s even a bit of a coded warning about this at the start, with the mother warning her youngest child that Marley will be the frightening one, but will be soon gone. One of his lines which is often left out, the explicitly Christian reference to the Wise Men following a star, is included here – and overall this version does retain more of Dickens’ specific references to Christianity than is usually the case in other adaptations of what’s become the great secular Christmas tale.
 
There are some minor changes, such as Scrooge meeting the two charitable gentlemen out on the street rather than in his office, but on the whole, as with the rest of the film, this section proceeds fairly faithfully to the book.
 
Past:
The spirit is female on this occasion, and seems to lack any of the candle imagery specified by Dickens – although I suppose you could say that her dance performance is perhaps intended to evoke the flickering of a flame. It’s fairly subtle though, if so, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course.
 
The school scene contains one of the few of this versions own inventions, a man called “Honest Tom” who is seen to comfort the young Scrooge during one of his lonely childhood Christmases. We get Fan bringing him home, and then later an extra Fan scene between the Fezziwig party and the Belle scenes – Fan dying in childbirth with Fred, which I suppose could perhaps be taken as implied in the book but isn’t explicit.

As in many other versions Belle is present at the Fezziwigs’ party, which she isn’t in the book, and we see Scrooge propose to her there. After the late scene of her breaking their engagement, here we do get the second Belle scene from the Christmas of Marley’s death, which any adaptation always gets an extra mark from me for including as I have always liked it. However, they don’t do the entire scene – we see her husband return home, but there’s none of their discussion of Scrooge and Marley which takes place in the book.
 
With the spirit lacking that candle imagery, here Scrooge does not snuff her out at the end of the section.
  
Present:
Most of the usual main elements are all present and correct here, but as in other places they also include some things which other adaptations often omit. So we have Scrooge’s confrontation with the spirit over the pressure to close bakeries on Sundays, and a little of their trip out to sea – although no miners.
 

Just before the end of the section, there is another of the inventions unique to this version, as we see examples of violence, aggression and prostitution on the streets of Victorian London. These are seemingly there to underline the issues of Ignorance and Want, as unveiled from beneath the spirit’s cloak as in the original.
 
Yet-to-Come:
The spirit has something of its usual hooded shape, but taking a cue from Dickens’s description of it “coming like a mist along the ground,” it’s depicted here not so much as a person as a kind of black cloud with a single hand emerging from it to point and gesture as-and-when required.

What’s To-Day:

Again, very faithful to the book – although there is one oddity which I don’t quite understand. When Scrooge asks the boy below his window to go and buy the prize bird from the poulterers’ for him, Dickens has the boy reply with a disbelieving “Walk-er!” This no longer being a common expression it’s not usually included in adaptations, although it is sometimes by those who like the period flavour it gives or just want to try and be as authentic to the text as they can.
 
Here the boy replies… “Walk-RE”. Which I don’t understand. It almost makes me wonder… Was it a typing error? A transposing of the last two letters of the response which somehow made it all the way through scripting, redrafting, recording, editing and dubbing…? It couldn’t be… Could it…?

Review:

It’s hard not to imagine a lot of the people who might actually have ventured to the cinema to see this turning to someone who’d come to it with them a little way in and asking, in trepidation, “Is it… like this all the way through?”
 
Sadly, yes it is. I didn’t hate this version by any stretch of the imagination, and I think that the design and concept of the staging of it, the whole idea of the characters being cut-outs within the dollhouse theatre setting, is lovely. And having Phillips as narrator to give us some of that wonderful Dickens prose is always something which I’d welcome.
 
But I suspect you’d probably get a lot more out of this version of you’re interested in interpretive dance – which I am not. I think you need words to tell a story, and while of course narration and dialogue are both present here, I find the way they’re detached from the characters on screen gives a distancing effect to the whole thing.

In a nutshell:
There are far worse versions, and it is an interesting experiment. It looks lovely – but I find it hard to believe it could ever be anybody’s favourite version of the Carol.

Links:

Frith Street Films

Wikipedia

IMDb

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

A CBeebies Chistmas Carol

Title:
A CBeebies Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Pre-recorded Christmas pantomime special, shot on multi-camera HD video
 
Country:
UK
 
Production company:
BBC Television
 
Year:
2013 (first shown on the CBeebies channel in the UK on December 20^th that year)
 
Length:
40 minutes
 
Setting:

Fantasy Victorian
 
Background:
The BBC has a long and proud tradition of high-quality children’s television, and the Christmas pantomimes on its CBeebies channel have become a new part of this tradition in the 21^st century. CBeebies – a corruption of ‘CBBC’, or ‘Children’s BBC’ – is a channel aimed at the under-sevens, and was launched in 2002. As with all of the BBC’s public-service channels, it is available on all television platforms in the UK, whether through a rooftop aerial, a cable or a satellite dish.
 
As with a traditional stage pantomime this took place in a theatre, in this case The Crucible in Sheffield – well-known as the home of the World Snooker Championships. Presumably one of the reasons it was chosen was due to how close the audience can get to the thrust stage.
 
It was recorded and edited for television transmission.

 
Cast and crew:
This was the sixth CBeebies panto, and as usual it featured a mixture of the channel’s presenters and the stars of some of its most popular programmes. For the first time, this one also featured some guest stars who’d been well-known on BBC children’s programmes of decades past, presumably to delight the parents or grandparents watching alongside the young children. So seventies and eighties presenters Iain Lachlan, Floella Benjamin and Derek Griffiths all poke their heads around the door, as does nineties Get Your Own Back host Dave Benson Phillips.
 
Of the contemporary generation, long-serving CBeebies presenter Andy Day stars as Scrooge, with fellow presenter Cat Sandion as the narrator and Children’s BBC stalwart Chris Jarvis as Bob Cratchit, and a host of other guest appearances and familiar faces from the channel alongside them of course.
 
Jon Spooner directed the theatrical production, with Bridget Caldwell directing the television recording – Caldwell was an experienced TV director who’s worked extensively on both multi-camera studio productions and live theatrical events. The producer was Jon Hancock, who’d worked on various other CBeebies productions, and the script was written by Claire Duffy, who later scripted a very well-received young children’s adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the channel.
 
Duffy’s script for A Christmas Carol is available to download from the BBC Writersroom website: click here.
 

Underdone Potato:
After an opening song and introduction from narrator Cat, we meet Mr Scrooge – quite a young incarnation this, although probably seeming old enough to the target audience – and his three employees. When the audience are told that Scrooge hates Christmas, it’s interesting to see him being booed like a pantomime villain. I know this is a pantomime, but it’s interesting because of course the story doesn’t really have a villain, as such, as Scrooge is technically the hero, in some ways.
 
We get a version of the Nephew Fred scene, before Scrooge heads off home to bed. There’s no Marley scene, although the animated character of Tree Fu Tom provides an equivalent. He doesn’t appear to Scrooge, but is projected onto the back of the stage once Scrooge is asleep, telling the audience that Scrooge will receive visits from three ‘friends’ of his, before there’s a bit of audience participation to create the magic to make them appear.

 
Past:
Derek Griffiths delights the older members of the audience with his appearance as… Well, the first ‘present’ to Scrooge. There’s never any mention of ghosts throughout the whole thing, or even whether it’s the past or the present, but Griffiths certainly looks ghostly in his costume, and the implication is clear enough for the members of the audience who know the story.

We visit a school, although not Scrooge’s own schooldays as such. Instead, he’s encouraged to join in with some messy antics around decorating a Christmas tree. Following this we get the Fezziwigs’ party, with Mr Tumble himself Justin Fletcher as Mrs Fezziwig, and long-serving presenter Pui Fan Lee as Mr Fezziwig.
 
It’s in this section where all of the other old Children’s BBC faces appear as guests at the party, with Floella Benjamin even bringing Humpty along for a rare outing! Griffiths points out that Scrooge enjoyed all the dancing, which he denies, and we get classic bit of panto “Oh yes you were!” business.
 
Present:
CBeebies presenter Katrina Bryan is the second ‘friend’, with a nod to the original’s appearance by wearing a crown of holly around her head.

 
She only shows Scrooge one vision – the Cratchits’ house, with Bob and his wife and their two children, a boy and a girl. The boy is never named as Tim, and doesn’t have anything wrong with him.
 
Yet to Come:
Steven Kynman as his Michael McIntyre-like CBeebies character Robert the Robot is the third ‘friend’, and there’s a bit of comedy business where he initially appears under the traditional cloak and hood, before stumbling his way onto the stage. He does specifically claim to be “from the future”, however.

 
He doesn’t show any visions of what’s to come, though – instead, simply teaching Scrooge, through the medium of song, how to be nice to people. This seems to do the trick, and by the end of it Scrooge is fully redeemed and regretful of his previous actions.
 
What’s To-Day:
Scrooge decides to throw a big party for everyone, sending out invites without saying who they’re from, and gathering everyone together on stage for the big reveal that it’s actually him, and he now loves Christmas. There is a hint of the little joke Scrooge plays on Bob on Boxing Day as he pretends to be cross with him before revealing he’s the one behind the party, before it all ends – of course! – with a song and a dance.
 
The two Cratchit children sign off with a version of Tim’s traditional toast – although, interestingly for a Christmas special, Duffy’s script makes it as secular as they can by changing it to, “Bless us all at Christmas, every one!”

Review:
I can imagine how difficult it is to try and create a version of A Christmas Carol which is suitable for very young children, and yet done in live action rather than with animation or with puppets. While this is clearly a very child-friendly version of the story, it does go to show that if done with attention and care even an adaptation so far removed from the source material can demonstrate what a strong framework the fine old story is.
 
Obviously I am very much not in the target audience for this, but I could appreciate that it was done well. There’s something rather charming about seeing the children in the live theatre audience erupt with glee and tumultuous applause when various of their favourites appear. Matched only, perhaps, by the similar reactions from the parents and grandparents in the audience when some of the familiar faces from their own childhood make guest appearances. All of them looking pretty pleased to be there, too.
 
If I had to make a criticism, I would perhaps say that none of the songs are up there with the best ones from the 1970 or the Muppet versions. But really, it’s hard to find fault with this – a fun little production which achieves exactly what it sets out to do. Certainly it’s a cut above the vast majority of other young child-oriented versions out there.
 
In a nutshell:
I’m sure this will be remembered fondly by many who were young children at the time as their first memory of A Christmas Carol.
 
Links:
BBC blog entry
CBeebies Wiki

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
 

A Sesame Street Christmas Carol

Title:
A Sesame Street Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Multi-camera studio video direct-to-DVD special
 
Country:
USA
 
Production company:
Sesame Workshop
 
Year:
2006 (released on DVD in the US on November 14^th that year)
 
Length:
46 minutes
 
Setting:
A fantasy version of a contemporary urban American city street
 
Background:
Sesame Street is one of the most famous television programmes ever made in the English language, designed as an educational aid to young children. By this point it had been running on the PBS public television network in the USA for nearly forty years, but was also very well-known and sometimes re-versioned around the world.
 
This was actually the second time the Sesame Street characters had been involved in a loose adaptation of the Carol. The theme, with even the same Oscar the Grouch character in the Scrooge part, had previously been explored in a 1978 Christmas special for the commercial CBS network, although this version is more explicitly labelled as being an adaptation of the Dickens tale.
 
Sesame Street, of course, stars various Muppet characters created by Jim Henson, and the Muppets of The Muppet Show had also made their own version in the early 1990s – which is now one of the most famous and beloved of all.

Cast and crew:
Sesame Street stalwart Carroll Spinney stars in his regular role as Oscar the Grouch, who is the central focus here. The various Muppet incarnations are always able to rope in some good guest stars, and here British stage and screen regular Tim Curry has a role as the narrator, having previously starred as Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island in 1996 – although his best known role of all is probably as the star of the 1970s cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Less auspiciously, he’d also voiced Scrooge in the bloody awful 1997 animated version of the story.
 
Director Victor DiNapoli had by this point had a very long and distinguished career on Sesame Street and its associated specials, having begun working on the show as a scenic artist in 197. He worked his way up to become a production designer and a director on the show, while also making a few on-screen cameo appearances when background human characters were required.
 
Scriptwriter Rickey Boyd had been a puppeteer and voice artist on various Henson company projects since the late 1980s. This linking script is one of only a handful of writing credits he has gained, having mostly continued to work as a performer.

Underdone Potato:
The special begins with a quite a nice, instrumental, Christmas-ified version of the famous Sesame Street theme tune, with some suitably plummy introductory narration from Curry, who’s only really a peripheral presence – he only has a few brief passages at the start and end, but I suppose adds a certain suggestion of old-world Englishness. He also has some interaction with Oscar, doing a bit of fourth-wall breaking.
 
Oscar, as you might expect, declares himself to be not a fan of Christmas, and has decided to sleep through the whole thing and pinned a note on the outside of his trashcan home to tell everyone so. However, he is rudely awoken by ‘Joe Marley’ of the ‘Scaredy Pants Delivery Service’, who has been instructed – we are never told by whom – to deliver three different ‘Ghost-a-Grams’ to Oscar throughout the evening, in order to attempt to cheer him up and introduce him to the Christmas spirit.

Past:
The first ‘Ghost-a-Gram’ is a CGI version of one of Oscar’s… species, I suppose you’d call it? ‘The Grouch of Christmas Past’, a famous grouch from London 1843 – a nice little touch as that was the year when the book was published. There’s a slight mixing of imagery from the book, however, as the character also wears chains – more usually associated with Marley, of course. Why it’s wearing them is not gone into.
 
The Grouch of Christmas Past shows Oscar two visions, although they’re not specifically related to his own life, but more general. It’s here that you realise that, actually, this is quite a cheap-and-cheerful affair, as almost everything Oscar is shown by all of the spirits by which he’s visited consists of archive material from previous Sesame Street productions.

This works well with the very first vision, however, a sweet little lesson about the gift of giving starring Sesame stalwarts Bert and Ernie. It works well because its archive nature is in its favour; it also features Sesame Street’s famous – and by this point long-dead – local store owner Mr Hooper, so would have been a nice little nostalgia-fest for some of the parents watching this with their own children when it came out.
 
The second vision shows Big Bird missing his / her / its best friend Snuffy on Christmas Eve, and singing a song to him / her / it down the phone. Not being particularly well-versed in Sesame Street I wasn’t sure if this was also archive material or newly-shot, although it became clear as things went along that all of the main visions were from previous Sesame Christmas productions.
 
Present:
Specifically labelled as a ‘Ghost’ this time, the Ghost of Christmas Present is a cheery talking Christmas tree which springs from a jack-in-the-box again delivered by Joe Marley. Once again it’s rendered in CGI, which I’m not sure really meshes particularly well with the traditional puppetry of Oscar. Certainly, character of Oscar must be about fifty years old by now, and looks much less dated than the CGI does here.

Anyway, she shows Oscar four more visions. Firstly, a couple of excerpts from an Elmo Christmas special where he meets Father Christmas and then later sings a song about realising it would be rubbish if it were Christmas every day. She then serves up a traditional Sesame Street educational segment, showing two families celebrating Hannukah and Kwanzaa, with a child from each family explaining to the viewer in voiceover a little about the respective festivals.
 
There’s a song to finish with, and Big Bird being reunited with Snuffy in a sequel scene to the one we saw in the ‘Past’ section, clearly lifted from the same previous special.

Yet to Come:
Nothing frightening or imposing here – no black-cloaked figure of death, but instead another cheery CGI creation. This one a sort of flying robotic football, a little reminiscent of those things from Terrahawks.
 
It only shows Oscar one vision, an animated short done in a kind of Hanna-Barbera style, showing a family taking a trip on a kind of theme park ride which shows them what Christmas will be like in the future, with pre-decorated trees and the like. One of the children of the family points out that they already have those.

What’s To-Day:
There’s a brief wrap-up section where Oscar emerges from his trashcan on a bright Christmas morning, and the whole thing appears to have actually been a dream. The ‘Joe Marley’ puppet is recycled as ‘Joey Dickens’, who sort of takes the role of the passing boy Scrooge hails from his window in the book. He’s come to bring Oscar a gift – a big sicky ball of used wrapping paper. Oscar in return gives him a smelly old shoe. It’s interesting to note that Oscar does not appear to have been significantly changed in any particular way by his experience.

Review:
This is an interesting one in the sense that it’s clearly a cut-and-shut job mostly made up of linking material shot on a single set with a very limited number of characters, around already-existing material, and obviously aimed at very young children. And yet in spite of all of that, it remains surprisingly watchable. Throughout the whole thing, Oscar has some nice lines moaning about and generally mocking everything, and the script never takes itself too seriously.
 
There are some nice gags at the expense of modern living, such as Oscar being asked by Joe Marley to rate the service he has received, and the vintage Bert and Ernie sequence is pleasant to see. Perhaps surprising, too, given that an important part of it revolves around a cigar box – an empty one, admittedly, but not something you’d expect a production for very young children to be allowed to make any reference to these days. So I’m pleased they didn’t feel this precluded them from including it.
 
Obviously it’s all very insubstantial, but against the low bar I judge all such child-focused versions against – the 2006 CGI monstrosity – it’s vastly superior. A direct-to-video… I hate to say ‘cash in’, but… Well, anyway, whatever it is, it has at least had a certain amount of care and attention taken with it, as you’d expect from the Sesame Workshop. The only criticism I’d made would be the use of CGI ghosts instead of puppets, and the Hanna Barbera-style animation – neither of which felt as if they sat particularly well alongside the more traditional Sesame Street techniques.
 
In a nutshell:
Better than it needs to be for what it is. But then again, what it is is a direct-to-video linking story around a whole load of old clips.
 
Links:
Muppet Wiki
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