By Geno McGahee
This year, as I do my Christmas movie review spree, I’ve found myself watching a lot of versions of the classic A CHRISTMAS CAROL and the latest I’ve watched starts Patrick Stewart as Ebenezer Scrooge. Now, I’m no STAR TREK fan and haven’t seen Stewart in much outside of AMERICAN DAD, where his voice acting was top notch.
This was the first version that starts at Marley’s (Bernard Lloyd) funeral and I do like the top hat that Scrooge wears throughout this one. It’s a nice touch, but I think a bald Scrooge doesn’t work, but I looked past it and watched on. The story advances seven years and Scrooge is now in his cold office with his assistant, Cratchit (Richard E. Grant). This version offers no changes to the story. Scrooge is still a cheap dickhead and Stewart’s take on him isn’t bad, but it’s somewhat dull.
One of the biggest disappointments of this film was the spirits. We begin with Marley and he is not imposing at all. Usually this character sets the tone for the film. Marley looks terrible. He looks like an old guy with a broken jaw and the anger you’d expect from the spirit isn’t there. If they had the budget for the bad CGI they used, they could have spent a little on some practical effects to make him look better.
The Ghost of Christmas Past (Joel Grey) is another terrible version. He looks like Iggy Pop if he had a flashlight shoved up his ass. What were they thinking with this? He takes Scrooge to his past where he was a young child and then to Fezziwig’s (Ian McNeice) business where he worked as a young man. This is where the movie really starts slowing down. There’s a couple jokes about Fezziwig’s wife being fat, and I typically like fat jokes, but it wasn’t funny.
The Ghost of Christmas Present (Desmond Barrit) is played as expected, but the jovial nature isn’t there. There’s usually a fun spirit to this character, but it’s just as miserable as the rest of this production. He takes Scrooge to Cratchit’s house and his nephew’s place and drives home the point that Scrooge is a miserable prick that needs to change his ways. It’s starting to work, but not incredibly well. It’s hard to tell as Stewart plays this role in one gear most of the time.
Finally and most disappointedly, we get the Ghost of Things to Come. Usually this character looks like the grim reaper and is menacing. Here, they threw a dark robe on a dude and gave him to little lights for eyes and it was terrible. It gets even worse when he starts pointing to stuff and you see his white fleshy arms. Why would this spirit have human white arms? You’d expect skeletal arms or decomposing arms. What the fuck is going on here?
In the worst part of this film, we get the part where Scrooge is dead and his items are sold by the grave robbers. This scene goes on forever as the guy that buys the shit goes through it endlessly. We didn’t need to know every little thing they were selling to the guy, but apparently the producers did.
Scrooge is returned home and when he awakens, I don’t know what the fuck Patrick Stewart is doing. He starts groaning and almost choking and looks like he’s busting a nut until he bursts with laughter. It was the strangest version of happy Scrooge I’ve ever seen.
Scrooge is now giving money to everyone and taking care of Cratchit and tries to make a relationship with his nephew as he does in every version. There was no surprise there, but this movie is just so dull. The spirits stunk and Stewart’s Scrooge wasn’t good. I usually watch the character and am amused early on by his behavior towards people, but then I grow to really like him and root for him. Stewart doesn’t have that here. It’s a monotone performance that never kicks out of first gear until the very end where he has the laughing orgasm.
I cannot recommend this one. It’s tough to sit through and I fucking love this story. They did a terrible job with it.
