A Whole Lot of Humbug (New York Times)
Dear friends and readers,
This NBC review of two new movies for the Christmas market is superb and ironic; at moments nearly scathing: Anibundel offers a sort of history of Dickens’s story in commercial terms (how many sold), a concise synopsis, and then these two new rewrites (?): Scrooge and Spirited, the animated one with a stellar cast (including Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley).
The irony of “Christmas Carol” reboots in the age of billionaires is “too bad neither “Scrooge” nor “Spirited” knows how:
Egbert says the ide of Spirited is there is a spirit industry in the business of redeeming a new miser each year; Metacritic finds Spirited a “whole lot of Christmas fun”
Scrooge, the animated one, is [more than] “slightly off key (another NYTimes review)
As Anibundel says, today’s super-rich are not finding redemption by being charitable …. I add they are not seeking redemption even …
FWIW, it seems from her description these contemporary versions have not made Scrooge into a miser. To make the “trick” work the very rich old man must both be a miser, seen as socially isolated, finamentally alone and somehow embittered. Central to the assumptions of the modern versions of Dickens’s tale is it is terrible to be alone; to keep Christmas is to be with others in a kindly spirit.
Opening scene of 1951 movie
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FWIW, my feeling is Dickens’s story would have to be so changed to speak to people today that it would really take the sort of thing a brilliant sequel or post-text once in a long while does. Some new character or perspective not in the original, or some minor character. The new character or perspective is Mary Reilly (Valerie Martin) out of RLS’s Jekyll and Hyde. The minor characters. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Stoppard) out of Hamlet.
Donna Reed as the unmarried Mary in It’s a Wonderful Life
A minor character ignored is the woman Scrooge loved as a young woman and who rejected him, and is seen fleetingly working in a poorhouse. Why has no one thought to re-write a post-text centering on her? Give her a memorable name? Remember her in the last scenes of memory of in the presence of Christmas present? … Probably not, and this morning I cannot locate my DVD of the 1951 movie and this moment is nowhere on the Net. Only the absurd picture of George Bailey’s wife, unmarried, an old maid librarian (a fate worse than death in It’s A Wonderful Life); Scrooge’s ex- grown old finds worthy fulfilling self-sacrificing (of course) charity to be performed.
See my review of the British 1951 movie, A Christmas Carol, with the imitable Alistair Sim, where the film-makers and audience could still respond to Dickens’s ghost tale.
Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey
I’ve written many reviews of Christmas movies meant for the Christmas market and others which have become Christmas movies over the years. But as a reboot, It’s a Wonderful Life deserved a blog of its own.
Roubaix in A Christmas Tale (a recent favorite with me)
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
Full disclosure: Anibundel is my daughter, Laura Moody
Lisa Guardini: “I love this film but I have to say the dig at librarians is a little annoying”
My reply: “It’s more than annoying; it is indicative of an attitude towards women found in many of these Christmas marketplace films. It’s a dig at unmarried women; they must be fearful of life, sexless (unless they become whores like the other women in the film); the swipe takes in contempt for librarians as obviously not proper machismo capitalist types. Thank you for noticing I included this one. I could not find a still I could snap of Scrooge’s ex grown old and serene as she serves those in poor houses at Christmas.”