(It's award
consideration season and I'm playing catch-up.
As I tear through them, I thought I'd try mini-reviews. Enjoy!)
When I was in high school, I was forced
to read Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations,
only one of which I was able to finish (the former) and neither of which I
enjoyed even a single page. Thus, I have no intention of ever reading A
Christmas Carol because I like several of the film versions and the story
in general and I don’t want it ruined by nineteenth century English
prose. So, I had mixed feelings going into The Man Who Invented Christmas.
On one hand, I was a little curious to see how the film would display his
inspiration. On the other hand, Dickens sucks. As GOAT pointed out
in his review, The Man Who Invented Christmas features great
performances and set pieces, but has flaws. The big flaw to me is in the
writing, specifically in how the film tries to make Dickens (Dan Stevens) his
own Scrooge. For most of the film, Dickens is caring and giving and
tolerant. He takes in his recusant father, lends books to his servant,
and gives money to the poor. If anything, he is the anti-Scrooge.
But, imaginary Scrooge (Christopher Plummer) - all the characters are in his
head, but visualized on screen for us (which was very cool) - and other
characters keep pointing to him as the one needing the ghostly interventions to
deal with his bad childhood. Not only is this nonsense, but detracts from
the good story of the movie (Dickens actually conversing with his creation to
create it) while coming across like something Dickens himself would have
written. It probably goes without saying I will continue to not read
Dickens in the future.
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