What’s this all about?
You know that Dickens story that’s been adapted hundreds, if not thousands of times by everyone from George C. Scott to The Muppets to Bill Murray to Beavis and Butthead? It’s that, in poorly-drawn cartoon, full-length movie form.
Fortunately they added “The Movie” to the title, so I wouldn’t think this was “Christmas Carol: The Breakfast Cereal” or “Christmas Carol: The Interpretive Dance.”
Who is Nick in this one?
Nick plays “Marley” of “Scrooge & Marley” fame. He appears in animated ghost form in three scenes.
Who else is in this one?
Kate Winslet (Titanic) provides the voice of “Belle,” Scrooge’s often left-out love interest. Although her role is greatly changed from Dickens’ original, at least she’s in the film.
Simon Callow (Not a single thing that I’ve ever seen) provides both the voice of animated “Scrooge,” and the live-action Charles Dickens in the perplexing live action scenes that bookend the film and add nothing (except production cost, presumably).
Did you see that?
As mentioned above, the first and last scenes of the film are live-action segments in which Charles Dickens is seen performing a reading of A Christmas Carol: The Novella (as he probably called it) to an audience of 19th Century Bostonians. We get multiple exterior shots featuring snow, buildings and carriages, as well as an interior scene with an audience full of period-correct extras. This all must have cost a fortune, and is apparently cut from some releases of the film (this went straight to VHS in the US).
As the performance begins, a mouse runs through the theater, causing a fancy lady to scream dramatically. The mouse is then woven into the story, in animated form, of course. What blew my mind, though, was that the live-action mouse was clearly CGI. It was awful CGI, even by 2001 standards, but it still would have been very costly to produce.
Were there no live mice available? All it does is run from one place to another is a split second scene, and later sit calmly looking at the stage. How was this not achievable with an actual mouse? -Michael
The cartoon mice and “live action” mice totally stole the show. Hands down the best part of the movie for me. First thing that should be noted about the mice is that they were actually rats. As someone who has had many pet rats over my life as well as a few mice, this movie had rats. The other thing I want to note is that the “live action” mice were totally CGI. I’m sure they could have gotten trained mice in for it, but they didn’t. -Sarah
What were Nick’s best parts?
Nick is in three scenes. In all of them, he’s a moaning cartoon ghost. I think the first one was the best. He moans a warning/explanation to Scrooge which sounded like the generic “ghost voice” everyone does when pretending to be spooooooky. -Michael
Nick was only in three scenes that I caught. I’m going to rate his first scene the best. It is also the longest, so he had the most time and dialog to display his voice acting chops. He did okay. It’s not his strongest area as an actor, but he got the job done well. -Sarah
What were Nick’s worst parts?
In his final scene, Nick’s cartoon ghost is dragged away by other cartoon ghosts. He moans something. I don’t know what. It was slightly stupider than his other two scenes, and the “voice acting” sounded like they scraped some audio from a tape that they accidentally left running after someone called “cut.” -Michael
I’m going with his last scene as his worst. His tone was just sort of flat and lacked inflection. -Sarah
How was the movie?
This is probably my least favorite adaptation of A Christmas Carol. It adds nothing to the story/premise, and doesn’t execute anything particularly well. Being animated, the directors could have created vast, stunning visuals of the ghosts and the visions that they deliver. Instead, we got choppy overseas-produced animation that was obviously done by multiple contract studios as background styles didn’t match character styles, etc.
The makers of the film did include the characters “Belle” and “Old Joe” who are from the original text, but are generally left out. They didn’t add much, though. -Michael
It was okay for a kid’s cartoon. It wasn’t bad, but it’s a well known story and frankly there are many other versions of the same story that are better if you are wanting to share the story with a kid or just need to watch a “Christmas Carol” in your next holiday season. -Sarah
Yeah, but did you like it?
This is not a good movie. -Michael
It was okay background noise. -Sarah
Where can I watch it?
You can watch it for free on Tubi.
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