Number 2500: Read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, No Matter How Many Adaptations You've Seen

When I realized that I would be reaching my 2500th post on Epinions this month, I tried to think of something I hadn’t reviewed yet that would be a good choice for a landmark review. Since December and 25 go together so well, I decided it should be a Christmas review. And then it occurred to me that I had never reviewed A Christmas Carol, the actual book as penned by Charles Dickens. Oh, I’ve reviewed film adaptations, but never the classic itself. And just after this revelation came the more startling realization that I’d never actually read it.

I felt like I had, since most productions lift large portions of dialogue directly from the book, and some - including my favorite, A Muppet Christmas Carol - incorporate bits of narration as well. Nonetheless, it only took me a couple of paragraphs, as the iconic “Marley was dead: to begin with” gives way to an amusing tangent about the dubious quality of the simile “dead as a doornail”, to be certain that I hadn’t read it before. It was around this time that it suddenly occurred to me how wickedly funny Dickens was. I suspect the skewered stylings of Lemony Snicket may owe a bit to this literary giant; I thought of him often as I burst into laughter again and again at Dickens’ amusingly intrusive narrative style.

As everyone reading this review likely knows, A Christmas Carol is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a reclusive miser with nary a kind word to say to anyone. Though he is a rich man, he is a stranger to generosity, and in general, those around him have learned not to expect it. His hardworking clerk, Bob Cratchit, knows better than to ask for a bit of coal with which to warm himself, and when Scrooge makes the brief journey to his austere home in the evening, young and old alike steer clear.

One man who will not be deterred is Scrooge’s eternally good-willed nephew Fred, who, upon issuing an invitation for Christmas dinner, prompts his uncle to make his most famous declaration: “Bah! Humbug!” And just in case there could be any question as to the meaning of this grumpy outburst, Scrooge spells out his feelings toward Christmas in the most ghoulish of language: “If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled in his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”

How does a man go from this to someone of whom “it was always said... that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge”? Otherworldly intervention. For right there on the title page, Dickens indicates that this is “A Ghost Story of Christmas.” The words don’t sound right together; I always raise an eyebrow when the “scary ghost stories” line comes up in It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. But a ghost story this certainly is, even if only the first of the four is the traditional spirit of a deceased person. The other three seem a different order of being altogether, created for a specific purpose and never having been human themselves. Sympathetic Christmas Past, jovial Christmas Present and terrifying Christmas Future serve as our guides through a story that is all about character development. A Christmas Carol may be a good deal shorter than the typical Dickens novel, but Scrooge is a richly drawn, fully realized character.

The trailers for Disney’s new edition of A Christmas Carol have been proclaiming the tale “the greatest Christmas story ever told.” An audacious claim, but not far off the mark. I would venture a guess that few books have made their way onto the screen so many different times, to say nothing of the number of theatrical productions that spring up this time every year. What’s more, some of the most enduring of Christmas classics in this past century bear the indelible mark of Dickens’ influence.

I’m thinking in particular of It’s a Wonderful Life, in which a heavenly messenger escorts a distraught George Bailey through a world in which he was never born. In a way, this is the opposite story; a man who has spent his life doing good for others must be shown, via his absence, what a positive impact he has made. And instead of going forth and bestowing blessings on everyone in sight, the many friends he has accumulated over a lifetime shower blessings upon him. I’m also strongly reminded of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, in which an ornery creature who despises Christmas is so touched by the happiness of the simple Whos despite his evil deeds that he makes a complete turn-around.

As an enormous fan of the show LOST, I can’t help crediting Dickens a bit there too. A Christmas Carol is one of the first tales that introduced me to the importance of backstory in truly understanding a character. From the beginning, flashbacks have been a hugely important element of LOST, allowing us to gain insight into these characters who gained a clean slate the moment they emerged alive from the smoldering wreckage of Flight 815. Meanwhile, starting in season three, viewers have caught glimpses of the future, prompting us to demand, “Are these the shadows of things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?” It’s one of the crucial questions of the series, and it has yet to be answered definitively. Then, of course, there is the redemptive journey. If a bitter old curmudgeon can become a beloved benefactor, why can’t a hardened conman become a respected leader? Why can’t a drunken coward become a sacrificial hero? Why, if Scrooge can reform, perhaps there’s even hope for a homicidal sociopath like Ben Linus.

I know this story backward and forward. Nonetheless, while reading the book, I was often caught by surprise by little nuances that don’t generally make the transition from book to screen or stage. For instance, the book made me much more aware of the depth of Marley’s remorse. While he always seemed mournful to me, and even sympathetic to Scrooge’s plight, what really struck me in the book was his distress at no longer being able to directly intervene when he sees those in need. It isn’t just that he wishes he wasn’t loaded down with chains; he truly wants to help the disenfranchised now and aches to think of all he might have done in life. For just a moment, the book shows us dozens of others like him, a harrowing spectacle indeed.

In the Christmas Past section, certain details amplify the effect of the visitation. Most notably, Scrooge, on three different occasions, is moved by a moment in his distant past to wish he had treated a particular person more kindly in his much more recent past. Witnessing his own childhood loneliness, he feels for the lone caroler who came to his door. Whisked away to the merriment of a ball thrown by his magnanimous employer Fezziwig, he realizes that he has been a brutal boss. And remembering the warmth of his little sister, he regrets his refusal to get to know her orphaned son. Perhaps catching me most by surprise was Scrooge’s reaction to the teenage daughter of his former fiancee. As he sees this young woman, he suddenly longs for fatherhood himself, realizing that it could have been his. I always understood him to be deeply distressed over the loss of his one true love, but I never gave much thought to their potential children or had any inkling that he himself did.

In Christmas Present, the first thing I noticed was an overabundance of food, and this quite prevailed throughout the chapter. I always contend that one mustn’t read Brian Jacques’ Redwall series on an empty stomach, owing to the inevitable detailed descriptions of sumptuous feasts. I’d repeat that warning here. I’d almost go as far as to say that Dickens momentarily loses himself in list upon list of mouth-watering delicacies.

Another observation: more characters. Martha, the eldest of the Cratchit daughters, is already employed and living her own life. Her presence among the family is akin to Sondra’s Thanksgiving return from college in season one of The Cosby Show. Topper, a friend of Fred’s, spends the majority of his time at the Christmas party attempting to seduce one of the sisters of Fred’s wife. This is a silly subplot, but considering the lighthearted tone of much of the novel, it doesn’t feel intrusive, especially as Fred’s party is such a small part of the overall narrative. In this original version, Fred and his guests still jest a bit at Scrooge’s expense, but it doesn’t seem to bother him as it does in many adaptations.

The only aspect of Christmas Future that struck me as very different was Scrooge’s constant search for himself in this future. He is anxious to see just what has become of him, though it never occurs to him that the deceased man of whom so many speak in such derisive tones could be him. The finale, too, is rendered faithfully in most adaptations, without any significant omissions, though some versions have Scrooge paying a visit to Bob on Christmas instead of delivering his gift anonymously and then messing with his clerk’s head at work the next day.

Aside from small details like these, what interested me most was the narration. While the physical descriptions often translate to the screen beautifully, and of course Scrooge’s biting dialogue is used as liberally as possible, much of Dickens’ sly commentary gets left by the wayside. For instance, he takes a long time in explaining to us that Marley is definitely dead when the book begins, taking a brief side trip to reference Hamlet and the ghost whose appearance precipitates the rest of the story. Occasionally, he has reason to trot out an aphorism such as this: "It is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too." At the same time, we get a sense of deep reverence for the holiday at hand. Fred’s festivities prompt the observation: "It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself."

I could go on, but I’ll leave the rest to be discovered by others like me who know the contours of the story by heart but haven’t picked up the book, thinking they will find little within its pages to surprise them. Trust me when I say that you haven’t fully experienced this classic until you have read it in the original Dickens. Of Christmas, Fred tells Scrooge, at the conclusion of a most flowery speech, “though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!” The same might be said of A Christmas Carol.

Ebenezer Bunny Gets a New Shot at Easter in Springtime With Roo

I recently reinstated my Netflix account, taking it off hold in anticipation of renting a plethora of Christmas movies to help get me in the holiday spirit. But I haven’t gotten around to updating my queue, so the first few movies have been surprises to me. I had to laugh at the seasonally inappropriate nature of my latest selection when I spotted the title Springtime With Roo. However, while the movie, with its array of Technicolor flowers and its emphasis on Easter, is thoroughly rooted in spring, except for the puzzling appearance of a wheelbarrow full of pumpkins, I discovered that it wasn’t such an oddball choice for the Christmas season after all.

Springtime With Roo, like most Winnie-the-Pooh movies, is on the short side. Clocking in at just about an hour, this direct-to-video release begins with a hyper Roo (Jimmy Bennett) disturbing the tranquil opening narration of David Ogden Stiers, who explains that the young joey will be the subject of this particular tale. To some extent that’s true, though the movie is just as much about Rabbit (Ken Sansom), who sets the main conflict in motion when he shatters his friends’ anticipation over the annual Easter egg hunt by declaring it Spring Cleaning Day instead. It soon becomes clear that Rabbit no longer considers Easter an acceptable holiday, and while Roo is disappointed to be missing out on so much fun, his biggest concern is his friend’s unhappiness.

It took me a while to cotton on to this, but Springtime With Roo, much like Veggie Tales’ An Easter Carol, is an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Persnickety Rabbit is an ideal choice to play the role of curmudgeonly old codger; he’s as much a neat freak as Scrooge is a miser, and at his worst, he can be quite the misanthrope. Owl might have been a good choice too, but he doesn’t make an appearance in this video, nor does Christopher Robin. Gopher isn’t in the main feature but does turn up, in typical pyro mode, in the New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh episode Trap as Trap Can, which follows Hunny for a Bunny in the Special Features.

Though the nods to the original story are not as plenteous as they could be, Roo is an excellent stand-in for Tiny Tim, while Tigger (Jim Cummings) exudes a Fred-like joie de vivre. Meanwhile, the narrator, with some help from the storybook and Tigger, provides the proper ghostly framework. The tale’s inspiration is most obvious toward the end, when Rabbit repents, first distraught over his friendless future, then “giddy as a school bunny” that he’s been given a second chance. At this point, if anyone still hasn’t gotten the reference, Tigger, with a broad wink at the viewers, demands, “What the Dickens - and I do mean Dickens - is going on here?”

Tigger gets all the best lines in this flick, with energetic bursts of jibberish that lead to him uttering one of my favorite words: onomatopoeia! Equally random: at one point, while showing Roo all of his Easter gear, Tigger accidentally unearths a dreidel. “Whoops, wrong holiday!” he amends. He also gets to sing a couple of short songs, as do most of the main characters. Eeyore (Peter Cullen) doesn’t have any songs to himself, but his fondness for a pair of fluffy bunny ears is good for a lot of laughs. While none of the musical numbers are still rattling around in my head, they’re fun in context.

Among the Special Features, the First Look at The Magical World of Winnie the Pooh is most worth perusing. What it amounts to is two episodes of the aforementioned series; Magical World was evidently the name of a set of DVDs containing episodes from the show. The first, in which Rabbit decides to give away his beloved bunny bookend because he believes he will never find its mate, fits particularly well with the movie, while the second is a fun romp involving a scrawny heffalump and his burly, heavily allergic father.

Sounds of Spring features three clickable scenes; click on the arrow pointing to an object and hear a corresponding noise. This activity is rather fun, but Decorate Rabbit’s House is annoying, since it is constantly correcting the improper placement of decorations. After a movie in which Rabbit’s fastidiousness proves to be problematic, it seems to go against message to insist decorations go in one particular spot when they would look just as good someplace else. Another feature includes step-by-step instructions for making a sort of butterfly puppet that looks neat but seems like it would fall apart easily. The rest of the features are DVD registration and a preview for Pooh’s Heffalump Movie.

Even though Springtime for Roo is an Easter story, its Dickensian nature renders it a suitable choice for this time of year, since it’s fun to compare it to the oodles of other versions of A Christmas Carol floating around. I’m still waiting for Eeyore to get a centric Pooh movie, but I have no complaints about this outing with Rabbit and Roo.

Charles Dickens Might Want to Haunt the Makers of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past...

There are few stories that have affected me as deeply as A Christmas Carol, the Charles Dickens classic that was one of the first to introduce to me the idea of a villain finding redemption. I've seen oodles of adaptations, and most have been very agreeable, with the Muppet version and the George C. Scott version taking top honors. I've now found one to occupy the bottom of the barrel: Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore and directed by Mark Waters.

This movie is a mild PG-13, but in some ways it's raunchier than many R-rated comedies. It takes the basic plot of A Christmas Carol but makes the pressing issue not miserly greed and outright misanthropy but insatiable lust and veiled misogyny. Connor Mead, played by Matthew McConaughey, is our Ebenezer Scrooge of sorts, a bachelor who makes a living taking shots of scantily clad women for famous magazines. His conquests seem to loathe him and desire him all at once; not a single female, it appears, is immune to his charms, but when they get together, these ladies have plenty of venom to spill about his callous nature.

While Ebenezer is deliciously acidic, spouting off pithy zingers with the force of a 19th-century Simon Cowell, Connor never has anything particularly eloquent to say. He's just thoroughly obnoxious, though the lechery that condemns him is overshadowed somewhat by the fact that very nearly every other character in the movie is absurdly oversexed. The movie centers around the wedding of Connor's younger brother Paul (Breckin Meyer), who, as Bob and Fred rolled into one, is far more likable than most but still guilty of cheating on his fiancee before they were engaged. If there's a "Tiny Tim" of the movie, it would be his impending marriage, the state of which becomes increasingly fragile from the moment Connor turns up, to the shock of most, for Best Man duty.

Filling the role of Jacob Marley is Wayne, the swingin' uncle who taught Connor everything he knows. Wayne has a much larger role in the film than Marley generally does; we see him playing a pivotal role in flashbacks, and his ghost turns up frequently throughout the film to talk things over with Connor. Michael Douglas plays Wayne as comically despicable, with his affection for his nephew his only really redeeming feature. Even once Connor has learned the lesson Wayne strove to teach him, his deceased uncle is still up to his old tricks, prowling the afterlife for Connor's cast-offs. Those would be the three ghosts - except two of them are clearly not dead, while the other takes the form of a braces-laden teenager, making Wayne's pursuit especially creepy.

As usual, the ghost of the past is the one with the most screen time. It would be nice, then, if she weren't so irritating. Granted, this character is usually a bit of a nag, but in this case, she also appears to be slightly deranged, making her commentary hard to take after a few moments. Luckily, Connor's one true love is much more tolerable. Her name is Jenny, and she is played by Jennifer Garner, which is part of the reason this aspect of the story reminds me of the far superior 13 Going on 30; another is that the teenage version of Jenny is played by Christa B. Allen, who also played the younger version of Garner's character in 13 Going on 30. (I also got a hint of LOST, with pre-adolescent Jenny, like Ben-loving Dharmaville dweller Annie, giving a birthday gift while on the swing set that the recipient still cherishes years later.) In both films, a boy and girl grow up best friends, but a longing for the popular crowd sweeps the girl away. In 13 Going on 30, the girl turns her back on the boy, while he moves on, broken-hearted but still true to himself. In this movie, Jenny never has the chance to make a long-term, conscious decision like that, since at the first whiff of heartache, Connor gets whisked off for indoctrination into his uncle's intensive school of Love 'Em and Leave 'Em. As an adult, she's bitter but otherwise nice enough, while he's the one with major personality defects. The movies wind up in a pretty similar place, but between sullying a beloved classic and making us put up with all sorts of saucy shenanigans, The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past doesn't earn a genuine desire for a happy ending.

McConaughey is an actor who seemed to teeter between endearing and insufferable. In We Are Marshall, the former characteristic was on display, but here, it's definitely the latter. Certain scenes with the lovelorn Jenny and the sweet - but never Bob Cratchit-force - Paul, whose high-strung but devoted fiancee Sandra (Lacey Chabert) is much like Mrs. Cratchit, make him tolerable, but it's too little too late. While those who love A Christmas Carol will have fun pointing out parallels (and M*A*S*H fans should keep an ear out for references to that show courtesy of Sandra's dad, Sergeant Volkom (Robert Forster), a gung-ho Korean War veteran), they might also want to listen for the distant but unmistakable sound of Charles Dickens rolling over in his grave.

Dickens Goes to the Dogs in Oliver and Company

When I was seven years old, the movie Oliver and Company hit the theaters. I immediately declared myself a big fan. I hung a large poster on the wall of my bedroom. I placed a finger puppet version of Oliver in the hot air balloon I had suspended over my bed so I saw him whenever I looked up. I bought the picture book adaptation from the Scholastic Book Club. But I never actually saw the movie. I'm not sure how that happened, as just about every other Disney movie that came out when I was a kid merited a trip to the theater, especially if it was animated. But I never got around to this one, and for some reason, I never rented it either. I finally got to see what I was missing this week when I rented it from Netflix.

Oliver and Company is an extremely loose adaptation of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. Instead of 19th-century London, it takes place in 1980s New York City. Little orphan Oliver (Joey Lawrence) is an orange kitten who strikes out on his own after his siblings are plucked from a street-corner box. The Artful Dodger is just plain Dodger (Billy Joel), a super-cool mutt who, after a rocky introduction, takes Oliver under his wing. Fagin (Dom DeLuise) looks pretty rough around the edges, but this human leader of Dodger's ragtag canine gang has a heart of gold, which I expected as soon as I heard DeLuise's voice. I always felt sorry for Fagin despite his villainous traits, but this Fagin is much more victim than villain and even has a heroic moment late in the film. The true villain is Sykes (Robert Loggia), to whom Fagin must deliver a hefty chunk of cash - or else.

Oliver's benefactor in this movie is Jenny (Natalie Gregory), a rich, lonely girl whose parents are often away on business. She lives under the supervision of jovial butler Winston (William Glover) and shares a home with pampered show poodle Georgette (Bette Midler). When Jenny happens upon Oliver, she is ecstatic, and Oliver, though he enjoys the company of Dodger's posse - dopey Einstein (Richard Mulligan), feisty Tito (Cheech Marin), regal Francis (Roscoe Lee Browne) and maternal Rita (Sheryl Lee Ralph) - couldn't be happier to have the home he always wanted. So he's not too pleased when they "rescue" him just as he's settling in and even less tickled to find himself being used as a bargaining chip to get Fagin out of debt.

This is a fun movie full of peppy songs and funny zingers, mostly from Dodger and his fellow dogs. I was a little disappointed to discover that Billy Joel had not written the music; it was his name I most associated with the movie, and I thought his role in it was slightly larger. Still, he does get the big show-stopping musical number, Why Should I Worry?, which bears a certain resemblance to Aladdin's One Jump Ahead. (It also includes the line "I got street savoir-faire," which my mom mis-heard as "I got fleas in my hair." Which no doubt was true as well!)

The other big number is Once Upon a Time in New York City, the opening song performed by Huey Lewis that firmly establishes the setting. This movie never lets us forget where we are, whether we're gazing up at the Twin Towers or joining Jenny and Oliver for an idyllic carriage ride through Central Park. Jenny does get her own song too, the very sweet and quiet Good Company, while Georgette's braggy Perfect Isn't Easy is amusingly over-the-top.

Just before the conclusion, there's one very dark moment involving Sykes, and there are slightly racy undertones with the way Tito and Georgette interact with one another. For the most part, however, this is a very sanitized version of the Dickens classic. The backgrounds have a somewhat flat quality to them, but they still are effective in capturing the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple. I confess it didn't hold my attention quite as much as I thought it might; I would say it's not quite up there with Lady and the Tramp or 101 Dalmatians. But for a lover of Disney, Dickens or dogs, Oliver and Company is a worthwhile movie to watch.