A Christmas Carol

[Paolo]

So who is your favorite Scrooge, and why? Why not?

I've narrowed the list to the more popular versions found at the rental store or showing here, as there are so many versions out there.

We're mainly interested in the character of Ebenezer Scrooge, not the movie overall, but also feel free to crap on any versions you hated.

(Dave, Dave?)

For me, my favorite Scrooge is Patrick Stewart.

However... he tries to carry the film by himself. In fact, he's the only thing that the film has going for it.

The effects are atrocious, the supporting cast is awful (with the exception of Bob), and the sets just don't do it for me.

This version also contains a HUGE error that really ruins it: Everyone sings "Silent Night", which hadn't even been written yet at that time.

The 1984 production is more lush, especially with Edward Woodward as 'Present'.

Would that Stewart could have been digitized into this version!

Scott is good, though, and the boy who plays Tiny Tim actually looks like he's about to drop dead.

I have problems with David Warner as Bob, though. He's just not a good "victim" character.

It was Tiny Tim who derailed the 1951 version for me.

So who is your favorite Scrooge? Bill Murray, maybe?

[nonconsensual (imported)]

That's why I am with Scott. There was a wonderful sadness in his performance. I still remember the joy as he was greeting the guests as they left his nephews house. Stewart's was everything in it because he did the story solo on Broadway a number of years. An alternative not mentioned is Mr. Magoo's animated with music by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill. It still makes me cry.

[Dave (imported)]

The only "Christmas Carol" that made me cry was from The Muppets. If you want a heaping dose of feel-good teary Christmas cheer -- it's the muppets. And that one only because they sing at the end of it.

As for the best version without puppet -- I have to think about that for a while.

[Paolo]

Dave,

Believe it or not, as a Muppet fan when I was a kid, I've never seen that one.

I've also never seen the Disney cartoon version, but the Nostalgia Critic's reviews of them.

Thanks, Riverwind. I knew you'd say something like that.

I was going to do some more light-hearted reviews of the usual holiday fare, but with as well as the last attempt went over, I think I'll give it up and just wait for some more new stories to come in. Dave can handle the film reviews.

[Dave (imported)]

I watched a repeat of the Patrick Stewart version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. He's very good. This version has two of my favorite lines of dialog.

However, I think that I like the George C Scott version better because I kept remembering much more of the specific dialog from that version. So I guess this falls into the category of favorite.

[moi621 (imported)]

George C. Scott > Patrick Stewart

Consider other production qualities too.

The Scott version is a better production too.

Moi

Child of Hollywood

1954 - 1964

[Paolo]

I agree with the both of you. As I said, my dream would be to see Stewart in the Scott film.

Then again, I want a lot of things I'll never see - like a new Mustang GT with a .30 over-bored supercharged 460 in it.

[Wolf-Pup (imported)]

Bill Murray in Scrooged

[gareth19 (imported)]

So who is your favorite Scrooge, and why? Why not?

I've narrowed the list to the more popular versions found at the rental store or showing here, as there are so many versions out there.

We're mainly interested in the character of Ebenezer Scrooge, not the movie overall, but also feel free to crap on any versions you hated.

(Dave, Dave?)

For me, my favorite Scrooge is Patrick Stewart.

However... he tries to carry the film by himself. In fact, he's the only thing that the film has going for it.

The effects are atrocious, the supporting cast is awful (with the exception of Bob), and the sets just don't do it for me.

This version also contains a HUGE error that really ruins it: Everyone sings "Silent Night", which hadn't even been written yet at that time.

The 1984 production is more lush, especially with Edward Woodward as 'Present'.

Would that Stewart could have been digitized into this version!

Scott is good, though, and the boy who plays Tiny Tim actually looks like he's about to drop dead.

I have problems with David Warner as Bob, though. He's just not a good "victim" character.

It was Tiny Tim who derailed the 1951 version for me.

So who is your favorite Scrooge? Bill Murray, maybe?

Bill Murray is never good in anything. The story has been updated for his performance because having absolutely no acting talent, Murray could never even attempt to recreate the Dickensian nineteenth-century ambience of Dickens's original.

George C. Scott is perhaps the most overrated, under-talented actor of all time (Charleton Heston doesn't count because wooden objects are not actors but stage props). The essence of Scrooge is that his heart and soul are withered. Alastair Sim and Patrick Stewart got it right. Scott is overly jovial, even chuckling a bit when he mutters that "every fool who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be buried with a stake of holly through his heart". A Scrooge who chuckles, give me a break. Scrooge doesn't have enough life left in him to even see a humorous side to his misanthropy, and an actor would have seen that. Sim's eating his Christmas Eve dinner silently and alone and then biting the coin in his change has the unsmiling dead soul within the Mammon-worshipping Scrooge just right. Whatever character Scott thought he was playing, it was too alive to have been the spiritually dead Scrooge.

Stewart recreates the spiritual death of Sim's Scrooge and layers it with the awakening of the resurrected soul capturing the exhilaration of a drowning man who has unexpectedly found his way to the shore. I think Sim could have equaled the nuance of that, but the cinematography of the day (way back in 1951) couldn't catch the close up reawakening Stewart and his camera man achieved.

[Paolo]

Scrooged was supposed to be funny, I think...

One thing I did note is, that this movie is where the sound bite "Sometimes you have SLAP them in the face, just to get their attention!", came from.