Karrol’s Christmas (2004)
This is a modern and extremely unorthodox take on the Christmas Carol story. I’ll admit, I only picked this movie because I caught the first half of it when it originally aired (which was 16 years ago, which is absolutely crazy to me when I think about it) and I never saw the rest of it. For some reason, multiple moments of what I saw really stuck with me for some reason. I was pretty nervous that I’d go back to watch it and that I would think it’s embarrassingly bad or stupid, so this one was of particular interest to me. It originally aired on the A&E channel. I have no idea if they ever re-aired it, but they definitely never put it on DVD or any other home format, but it was pretty easy to find online.
The basic gist of the story is that the main character, Alan Karrol (get it?) has some bad memories associated with Christmas in the past and is struggling in his extremely cliched job of being a greeting card writer. He has a bad relationship with his elderly neighbor, who coincidentally founded the company he works for (played by Wallace Shawn, Vizzini in the Princess Bride and the voice of Rex in Toy Story). His poor attitude keeps his fiancee from asking him to marry her and she begs him to get over his Christmas hangup.
After she leaves in a huff, he’s visited by the Spirit of Jacob Marley. This is where it starts to get bizarre. Jacob Marley here is a Jamaican ancestor of Bob Marley (before the original Jacob Marley died, he had a “wild vacation”). The ghosts become increasingly more strange. One is an “intern ghost” on her first haunting, and the others are played by comedian Larry Miller, who is a Jewish man who failed at being the Ghost of Hannukah Present, and your typical black-robed “death” version of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, who is revealed to be Mini-Me actor Verne Troyer. It becomes readily apparent that the ghosts were given the wrong address and are supposed to be haunting the main character’s jerk neighbor instead. Alan starts being taken to the wrong person’s present and past. My memories of this movie are mostly from this portion, where I still think there are a number of really solid jokes and cleverness and some interesting irreverent spins on the Christmas Carol story.
Unfortunately, the rest of the production doesn’t really hold up. It’s clearly a low budget, made for TV movie, but many of the side-character actors deliver soap opera quality performances. Wallace Shawn has a couple of actually really good emotional scenes, but there are a number of other scenes that are Hallmark levels of sappy/corny. It’s unfortunate, because I still did find a number of scenes funny and I was amazed how many of the jokes I remembered from the one time I saw only half of this movie. I’m convinced that this still has a great concept, but a lackluster execution. If the performances and production of something like Scrooged could have been fused with the edgier humor of this one, I think it would be a great production, but unfortunately it ends up feeling like half of a good movie.
A Christmas Carol: Scrooge’s Ghostly Tale (2006)
This version is a CGI animated take by BKN International, a German animation studio that worked on a handful of animated TV series. All of the characters are portrayed as various anthropomorphic animals.
Immediately after kicking this one off, I knew it was going to be a long 45 minutes. We start with some montage of some pretty barren London streets, with a generic sounding piano score. We then see a Christmas tree with a few animals dancing beneath it. A narrator says that there is hustle and bustle with everyone buying presents, ingredients, and waiting for Santa and his reindeer to deliver cheer.
“One wealthy in money but not in spirit, is the poorest man of all”, warns the narrator.
Scrooge (who is a skunk) pulls Cratchit (a rabbit) into his office and shakes a box of coins, insisting that it’s a farthing short. Cratchit asks if he is suggesting that he stole it, but notices that there is a coin on Scrooge’s forehead. I’m unsure how that could occur in the process of counting coins.
Fred (also a skunk) arrives and invites him to dinner. Scrooge says he’s running a business, he has no time for such things. Fred points out the coin on his forehead and says he should let Bob go home early since it’s Christmas Eve. Scrooge gives Bob his leave and begrudgingly lets him have Christmas day off.
Two charity bears start talking to Fred outside and Fred gives some of his last spending money to their orphanage fund. They spot Scrooge and the bears think they should talk to him since they know he is wealthy, but Fred suggests they may be wasting their time. They ask Scrooge about donating and he responds by slamming his cane down on one of the bear’s feet. He says that if orphans need money, they should work for it. The bear points out that they are children, and he says they should do children’s work then.
We cut to Scrooge eating in his bedroom. The ghost of Marley begins to call his name and Scrooge demands that whoever is calling show themselves. Scrooge says he’s been “at rest” for two years (why not seven?). Marley appears to be a cricket? Or some kind of bug with antennae anyway. He gives his speech, then disappears into Scrooge’s fire (which looks awful, as it seems like they unnaturally pause and rotate his character model during it). Meanwhile, some mice watch from a mouse hole in Scrooge’s house and remark that his house is haunted. I’m even further confused at this world’s logic. If Marley was a bug that appeared to be Scrooge’s size, why are the mice not the size of all the other animals?
Speaking of the mice, let me go on a tangent here. The word “mice” is written in the book exactly one time and it’s used to describe how quiet a scene is. I am baffled by how many versions somehow involve mice or at least a mouse, particularly because Scrooged had a gag where the CEO of the cable company wanted to put a dormouse into the story in order to bring in “cat viewership”. Just a strange coincidence, I guess.
Scrooge goes to bed crying, “Nothing makes sense anymore!”. I know how you feel, Scrooge. A female voice wakes him at 1:00, and it’s revealed to be his pillow that is talking, which transforms into a Crane, or maybe a goose, which says she’s the Ghost of Christmas Past. I was kind of hoping for the insanity of having a pillow be the ghost. Scrooge and the Spirit go through a wormhole in the ceiling into the past. Scrooge says he recognizes the house he and his sister Fan were born in. We see young versions of them making a snowman, complete with generic stock sound effects of children laughing.
Young Scrooge is excited for Christmas Eve. Their father arrives, but says he can’t stay long because he has to go to work. He’s immediately sending Scrooge to boarding school and we see young Scrooge on a train crying by himself.
A slightly older Scrooge is at the school and Fan visits. Fan announces that she’s getting married, and she promises that Scrooge can come and live with them. The Spirit says she’s taking him one year forward. Fan visits again and has baby Fred in tow. Scrooge asks if she’s ready for him to come live with them, but Fan says with the baby, they won’t have enough room in their small flat. Young Scrooge angrily says he doesn’t need her or anyone else. Fan cries and says Scrooge will never know how much she loved him and Scrooge is saddened that he didn’t know.
The Ghost of Christmas Present shows up and he’s a kangaroo, complete with some didgeridoo music and an Australian accent. He takes Scrooge to the Cratchit house. Tiny Tim offers a toast to Scrooge and even Bob is somewhat incredulous. Tiny Tim says that he’s afraid no one else would wish him a good Christmas.
Scrooge is quickly taken to Fred’s party, where the party goers sing a weird little song with repetitive lyrics and piano playing. Scrooge says Fred’s wife reminds him of Fan, which is sort of weird, but also funny because it’s probably because they reused the same character model. Fred offers a toast to Scrooge, and everyone is shocked here too. Fred says his mother loved Scrooge so much. Mrs. Fred says “Merry Christmas to the old fool”. “How right she is…” Scrooge says in an incredibly cheesy fashion.
The clock strikes and Scrooge is outside and the Ghost of Christmas Future appears in front of him. This caused the first time I laughed out loud at this movie, because the Spirit is a walrus in a black hood that looks hilarious. In another bizarre move, this Spirit talks and tells Scrooge that he is feared because he represents the unknown. He flat out tells Scrooge that he can change what he sees, which kind of takes the drama out of the story, but I’m not really surprised given the train wreck I’ve been watching for the past half hour.
The Spirit takes him to the Christmas tree where the ugly animals were dancing in the intro (the same animals, so I guess the fact that they are not older can only be blamed on the extremely low production values). Scrooge says the future doesn’t seem that bad, but then an elderly Tiny Tim (who is now missing a leg) says that he hates Christmas and can’t stand hearing this caroling. Scrooge says “No, not Tiny Tim!” He blatantly points out that Tiny Tim has become just like himself, and begs the Spirit to see if there is something that can be done to change it.
The Spirit takes him to his business, which is boarded up and unused. The two charity bears are walking by and one tells the story of how Scrooge was so obsessed with his money, that he stacked his coins too high and he was “done in” by his own greed. Apparently he was literally killed by coins falling on him. The Walrus Spirit takes him to his own grave and then Marley’s Ghost appears in the graveyard and recaps that he has seen all three spirits.
“Can you mend your ways? Can you heal your soul? You must open your heart to others”, the Spirit tells him. Scrooge wakes up in his bed and he runs to his window, where he asks a little dog boy what day it is. He asks if the butcher shop is still open and offers a coin to ask the butcher to wait for him and then throws him even more coins.
Scrooge sings a short song about having a second chance, while the mice in his house comment that this is a real Christmas miracle. The butcher tells him that he will have the “biggest and best for the Cratchits” (I noticed he doesn’t say what, because it would seem kind of cannibalistic given the setting) and then Scrooge runs into the charity bears. He gives them 50 pounds, even though they only asked him for 5.
Bob receives the “something” from the butcher (it’s just shown as a package) and Tiny Tim suggests that Scrooge sent it and that the Christmas Spirit has found him at long last. Scrooge stops by Fred’s house and asks to be forgiven and they happily accept his apology.
The next day, Bob runs into the business (a whole minute late!) and Scrooge pretends to be upset. “There is only one thing to do…I must give you a big fat raise!”, Scrooge yells. Scrooge asks for forgiveness for not being a good friend and Bob says that Tiny Tim was right about him. He sends Bob home to his family and says that he doesn’t want to see him until the New Year. He says they’ll fix Tim’s leg if they have to travel the world to do it.
Scrooge dances about how good it feels to help others and Jacob Marley’s ghost appears to him and he thanks Scrooges. Because since he cared about Scrooge and helped him, he is now free! The chains disappear and he flies away with Scrooge waving.
The narrator says “And so Scrooge had been given a ghost of a chance”, which is such a bad pun I can’t believe the Muppets didn’t bring it up. We see Scrooge cutting a ribbon and the narrator explains that he used his wealth to build a brand-new orphanage and built a new wing on the hospital. He makes Bob Cratchit his partner and hires his son Peter. Tiny Tim’s leg is healed and “there was never a merrier Christmas to be found, than with Ebenezer Scrooge”.
This one is without a doubt, the worst of the bunch. As far as visuals go, it’s incredibly unappealing to look at. All of the animations and characters look like they came from an original Playstation game, with jarring mouth movements that are just unpleasant to look at. I know Pixar is an unfair studio to compare this to, but when Pixar can put out the Incredibles a year before this movie, it’s hard to forgive how truly bad this CGI is. The voice acting is mediocre, the music is repetitive, and the story is so watered down that it’s embarrassing. Changes like Tiny Tim just growing up to be like Scrooge (Why would Scrooge even necessarily be upset over this?) and Marley being “set free” at the end are clear attempts to make the movie more “kid-friendly”, but to what end? Every other version that’s been clearly made for kids has at least had the guts to show a future where Tiny Tim is dead. It’s worth mentioning that I don’t even think the word “dead” is used in the movie at all. This movie would be too boring for a child young enough that parents are concerned about that sort of thing being mentioned anyway. Speaking of words, I’ve developed a pretty good ear for listening for dialogue that is taken straight from the novel, and I’m not sure there is a single spoken line that is from the source material. They even took out “God bless us, everyone!” You think they would have gone all in on the religious material with how squeaky clean they made this movie, but they manage to disappoint in that regard as well.
If you can’t tell from my ranting, this is the lowest of the low and the worst of the worst. The only recommendation I can make is to avoid it at all costs.
Bah Humduck! (2006)
Warner Bros. makes a second-attempt at the Christmas Carol formula with another Looney Tunes version. This one is 45 minutes long, so they have a lot longer to fill than the short version from the 70s. It was originally released straight to DVD, but it was also broadcast on Cartoon Network.
In this modern retelling, we focus on Daffy Duck as the Scrooge-like character (which I think is a much better fit than Yosimite Sam), but all the featured characters retain their normal names, so he’s not really “Scrooge”, he’s just Daffy. Daffy is portrayed as the CEO of the “Lucky Duck Department Store”, a parody of your typical Walmart-style megastore. All of the emlployees are various Looney Tune characters, including Wile E. Coyote, Elmer Fudd, Marvin the Martian and more. Some are even characters you don’t see used often anymore, like Pepe Le Pew and Speedy Gonzalez.
Bugs Bunny starts the movie with a little narration about Christmas time, before he is almost run over by a stretch limo with Daffy as the passenger. Daffy is dropped off at his store and he scares away some charity collectors, including a young girl pig that is revealed to be Porky Pig’s daughter, Priscilla and we also get a cameo from Playboy Penguin, who is a criminally underused character. Porky takes on a Bob Cratchit-esque role as the “Assistant Assistant Manager” of the store, who just wants to buy a dollar for his daughter, but he can’t afford it with his salary.
Each of the employees has their own little sub-plot problem, Wile E. is hungry, Elmer Fudd is working so long that he can’t stay awake, Marvin the Martian wants to go back to Mars for the holidays, etc. It’s pretty easy to see where that setup is going.
Daffy spurns all of their needs and only cares about his increasing profit margins. As he settles into his office, he’s visited by the Ghost of Sylvester the Cat (“Sylvester the Investor”, his business idol) who tells him he will be visited by three spirits and he must amend his ways. From here on, it’s some standard slapstick affairs with some jokes punctuated throughout. Past is Granny and Tweety bird, Present is Yosimite Sam, and the Future is the Tasmanian Devil (who appears in some department store TV displays in a scene almost exactly like the final spirit in Scrooged, I’m unsure if it was intentional or not.)
They show him his past as a sad orphan duck, Porky’s present struggle to make his daughter happy for Christmas, and his tombstone, where Priscilla visits the grave and says even though no one misses him, she doesn’t want anyone to be alone on Christmas.
Daffy is touched and decides to give back to his employees by solving all their problems (gives Marvin a rocket ship, gives Elmer Fudd a vacation, Wile E. some food, Porky a raise, etc.)
This one went by pretty fast, and it was honestly not much of an improvement over the previous one. There’s a fair amount of slapstick that isn’t particularly inventive or funny that pads out a lot of the time. Bugs Bunny shows up a few times, but really should have gotten more screen time, as the Bugs/Daffy dynamic is one of the funniest things to do. I think it could have been better if Bugs was like the antithesis of Daffy, a successful philanthropist who makes him look awful by comparison, but instead he just sort of walks into the store as a customer a few times and has a couple of scenes with Daffy.
There are a couple of dialogue gags that got a few chuckles from me, particularly related to Daffy’s stubborn cheapness, but most of the other Looney Tune characters exist only to have an issue and don’t really get to add their own humorous personality to the whole affair. Unless you are a rabid Looney Tunes fan, I don’t think I would recommend this one.
There are 6 more movies and one mini-series to go! I’ve already watched a couple and since we’re a day away from Christmas, I think I’m going to post one final write up with all of them on Christmas Day.
Thanks for reading and have a merry Christmas!
