A Christmas Carol (2020)

A Christmas Carol (2020)

Director: Jacqui Morris. Cast: Thea Achillea, Edd Arnold, Simon Russell Beale, Leslie Caron, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya. Andy Serkis

I don’t think there’s ever been a version of A Christmas Carol that I haven’t liked to some degree, whether it’s the Disney animated version from the 80s with Mickey Donald and Scrooge (that’s my favourite in fact), or the one with the Muppets or Bill Murray’s Scrooge, I always end up going along with it. There’s clearly something within the actual original Dickensian story itself that makes it not just timeless, warm and magic. Nothing screams more “Christmas” than “A Christmas Carol”.

So when I heard that a new version was being made with Carey Mulligan, Martin Freeman, Andy Serkis, Daniel Kaluuya and Simon Russell Beale,, I just couldn’t wait to see it.

Bizarrely it ended up being the version is the one that left me the coldest. I didn’t mind the theatrical/stagey approach mixed with animation, some that in fact looked really good, but having relatively unknown actors and dancers mining words spoken by off camera the better-known actors I was hoping to watch .made for a very jarring viewing experience (and also made me wish I was watching those actors instead). The very artificial (and constantly distracting) format felt more like an experiment than and actual film and crucially took all the emotions out of the story.It may be an interesting piece of “Art” or “theatre” (and I use the inverted commas not by chance), but as a film it’s a complete failure (and a rather boring one too).

So in the end the two stars are only there for the production design work.