Ed's Review Dot Com

Albert Finney, Alec Guinness, Edith Evans, Kenneth More, Paddy Stone, Michael Medwin, Mary Peach, David Collings, Richard Beaumont

Ebenezer Scrooge is a miserable old miser who hates Christmas. He is only concerned with money and has no heart when it comes to his business dealings. His deceased partner Jacob Marley comes to visit him on Christmas Eve and promises three ghosts will visit to save his soul. Scrooge fights his way through the three ghostly visits and sees a new side of human kindness and a Merry Christmas. There have been many versions of A Christmas Carol, but this was the first to do a large scale musical version of the film.

Albert Finney does a wonderful job as Scrooge. He’s young enough to play the young Scrooge well, but through the magic of make-up can turn into old Scrooge just admirably. So with all the versions of A Christmas Carol to choose from, why this one? Well, I thought hard about that, and certainly the musical does make it very different than most. There are a few things that are changed from the story, mostly things that did not need to be changed, but I guess that is poetic license. (For example, Scrooge’s girlfriend Belle was NOT Fezziwig’s daughter), but for the most part, it is pretty faithful to Dicken’s words. Most of the songs are not real classics. It’s odd that the most memorable song of the film is the “Thank You Very Much” song sung to the recently departed Ebenezer Scrooge from those who owed him money. 🙂

This is a very worthy version of arguably the best Christmas story ever written. Certainly my collection of “Christmas Carol” was not complete until I saw this one. I enjoyed it very much, and felt the music added a lot to the story. It was not silly or light-hearted, it was very faithful to the story. All in all, it’s another Christmas classic, and very well done, for sure!