Turner Network Television, Hallmark Entertainment
Patrick Stewart, Richard E Grant, Joel Gray, Ian McNeice, Saskia Reeves, Desmond Barrit, Bernard Lloyd, Dominic West
Ebenezer Scrooge is a miserly old businessman in 1840’s London. One Christmas Eve his partner, dead 7 years, arrives to warn him of the error of his ways. That night 3 ghosts arrive and show Scrooge his past, present, and future selves.
This is a very accurate retelling of the short story by Charles Dickens. Patrick Stewart is an excellent choice for Scrooge. I have heard the books on tape version of the story by Patrick and it’s one of my favorites. Richard E. Grant is also an excellent Bob Cratchit. The vision and recreation of 1840’s London is awesome. It looks to me exactly how I would have expected it. The story is complete and includes a lot of the little details of the story that most retellings omit. A few of the lines have been changed to modernize the language which I don’t really appreciate, but all in all this one of the very best versions of a Christmas Carol that I have seen, and I think I’ve seen them all! I would definitely put this one in the top three best versions for sure. Patrick Stewart is an amazing actor. I shed a tear as the old Scrooge did all in his power to try to get young Scrooge to run after Belle and get her to come back. Of course he could not, but the emotion he put out there gets to me every time.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
** A Christmas Carol (1999),
