Perhaps you've heard of Charles Dickens's oft overlooked novella A Christmas Carol, a small footnote in the annals of holiday tradition long overdue for a resurgence. I'm being facetious of course. You've heard of A Christmas Carol. You may have even read it of your own volition. Or perhaps you know the timeless tale through one of the hundred or so adaptations you may have stumbled across in December's ritual of channel surfing. The point is, you KNOW the story.
Well, screw it; I'll summarize it anyway. Elderly miser Ebenezer Scrooge receives an intervention from an old friend in an attempt to awaken him to the fact that there is something more valuable in life than acquisition of wealth. It's a ghost story where the ghosts are benevolent, if unfiltered in the use of tough love, and it's an early example of how much Heaven and Earth have to move in order to get a man to go to therapy.
My first encounter with the story happened when I was six years old and cast in my church's production as Tiny Tim (my first acting role). I had a whole speech about God that I'm proud to have had memorized, and to this day I feel a connection to every kid who shows up in the role.
Suffice to say, I've seen a lot of versions of the story, and it's always some strange personal investment I take with my viewings as if somehow I have some connection to Mr. Dickens himself. Arrogance, for sure. But it's arrogance with a heart, because I really do love the story, and every version I watch I WANT it to say something new or figure out that special gimmick to nail down what the alleged true meaning of Christmas is supposed to be.
Here then are twelve versions of Christmas Carol that all stand out for good or ill, in tier-list order of quality (sorry in advance, Muppet's Christmas Carol fans).
12. Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas (2006)
*sigh* Where to begin with this one? The Looney Tunes are probably the last batch of characters who should be telling this story, as their chaotic energy really lends itself poorly to 'heart'. It can be done, but their brand of sociopathic humor translates much better to Halloween.
The Looney Tunes took the story on once before in a television special, casting Yosemite Sam in the Scrooge role to better effect. Here it's the perpetual loser Daffy, who's immediately out of place in a position of authority. Bugs serves as the antagonistic narrator, with a few moments that one can recognize as jokes if not laugh at.
WB would never have gone for this idea, but what if Bugs and Daffy had switched roles? Scrooge requires an audience to believe that there's already a good man beneath the wounded exterior, and seeing Bugs play mean for the first half would have been an inspired, if not odd, choice, while seeing Daffy as unable to keep the story on track would give him much more opportunity to do Daffy things.
I love A Christmas Carol, and I love the Looney Tunes, but they're two flavors that don't pair well together, and this version has to water down both to find any kind of balance, and in the end it has the flavor of tap water.
11. A Christmas Carol (1910)
More accurately known as "Thomas Edison's A Christmas Carol", this silent film is thankfully brief but hits most of the major beats of the story in a whopping thirteen minutes. Chances are you'll only watch this one unironically if you're a diehard cinephile, and for a one hundred and fifteen year old bit of film history the silent acting is surprisingly good. The scenes themselves tend to fade out of energy well before the iris closes on them, but rough edges aside the film does what it sets out to do.
Scrooge's Greatest Hits Reel is ultimately not the worst thing to sit through if you're assigned it for a class or something, and God bless them everyone, they're really trying here. I don't know how much Thomas Edison had to do with the production; his checkered past certainly casts a bit of a shadow over the proceedings, but it is what it is. Unintentionally funny in some places, A Christmas Carol is best treated as cinema's rough draft of Christmas Yet-to-Come.
10. Disney's A Christmas Carol (2009)
Let me get this off my chest: I have a low tolerance for Jim Carrey. I feel like his brand of humor set comedy back a few decades. I'm sure he's a nice guy, but I'm not a fan. Thank you.
That out of the way, why cast Jim Carrey as Scrooge if he's not going to do Jim Carrey...things as Scrooge? He's not some master thespian who's going to explore nuance. My guess is Robert Zemeckis was trying to channel comedic actor Alastair Sims's (more on him shortly) approach and combine it with Carrey's human contortions to get the motion capture shots he wanted.
Ah, Robert Zemeckis. A once great director who fell in love too much with his own film gimmick, the motion capture program. Visual effects have obviously come a long way in 99 years, but Zemeckis seems to think he can sacrifice substance for spectacle, and the result is a relatively soulless rendition. There are moments where a spark of something happens. The bit where the Ghost of Christmas Present ages and dies while Ignorance and Want grow into adults is honestly the best version of that normally omitted passage from the Dickens text I've ever seen. But at no point has the story ever required a chase scene involving size shifting. Zemeckis could have made a pretty competent live action film with some jaw dropping effects instead of an animated film containing so many boring stretches. Meh.
9. Twisted Carol (2004)
Huh? What? What's Twisted Carol from 2004? Glad I made you ask. It was a stage production that I was in when I worked for Disney, thus making A Christmas Carol the only stage show I've ever acted in more than one version of. Imagine taking the Dickens template but inserting karaoke songs every page; that was Twisted Carol from 2004.
I played Young Scrooge for two scenes, but I was primarily cast as a dancer for "Ghostbusters", "The Time Warp", "Love Shack" and "The Y.M.C.A."; I'm very proud to have been primarily a dancer for a production. My memories of the show were that it was a miserable experience up until it became fun, and then it became really fun. We performed it in Animal Kingdom's locker area, and the whole cast had to do costume changes in front of each other, which was honestly when we started gelling as a cast.
But what of my review of the show? Bearing in mind I never actually saw it from the audience's point of view. Well, it was a crowd pleaser. From what I hear, the dance numbers all looked really good. It was honestly just a silly little community theater venture that reached for the stars and landed somewhere among them. My lesson, if you can't capture the heart of A Christmas Carol, capture the heart of whatever your gimmick is, and most audiences will follow you.
8. A Christmas Carol (1843)
Well, let's have a look at the novella by Mr. Dickens, shall we? After all, without his prose we wouldn't have the other eleven entries on this list, or arguably a lot of Christmas traditions as it were. The novella is something you can get through in a single sitting (at work, as I've proven), and there are a LOT of descriptive passages that one can easily skim.
So what can be said about the great-grandfather of the Grinch? Dickens's Scrooge comes into his own as a fully developed character, it's no wonder every actor hopes to play the old miser one day. He cries, he hurts, he lashes out, and he demonstrates the odd moment of humor every so often. I mentioned therapy earlier, it's fascinating to acknowledge that Dickens essentially writes an account of an intense therapy session well before Sigmund Freud would have nailed down such a thing.
It's worth noting that Scrooge's hellbent sin isn't one of greed, it's made clear that Scrooge is an honest man. It's one of apathy, a deadly sin we don't spend much time writing about. He's a man who's buried his pain so deeply that it's caused him to stop feeling anything other than inconvenience, and every actor who steps into his nightgown is going to have to convey that internal struggle. Either that or fully lean into whichever gimmick their adaptation is lauding.
7. The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
I know there are people who hate me for having this version so low on the list. Please know I've tried to warm up to it, but I can't get past how confused this film's identity is. Jim Henson was dead, and the Muppet's first posthumous project was bound to be self-conscious. The Muppets are funny, but for some reason veteran writer Jerry Juhl forgot to include that element. Not helping is the fact that the ensemble of lovable crazies is relegated into isolation from each other, and instead of getting a chaotic mess of the Muppets trying to hold a film together with stuff blowing up everywhere, we get them succeeding at just kind of telling the story as is.
Michael Caine is hit and miss. Some of his scenes work beautifully. His reactions to Waldorf and Statler's ghosts are of genuine terror, and his scene in the cemetery evokes some real emotions. But he's no Carol Burnett, and Caine seems to have decided the audience is a different selection than it is. If you're in a musical theater, you play it differently than drama, and Muppet projects have their own rhythms and beats. It's worth pointing out that Caine's interactions with the three ghosts play better than with Kermit and company, one wonders how it would have come together as an entry in Jim Henson's The Storyteller. But you work with the Muppets, it's a prerequisite you do Muppety things.
I'm hard on this movie because I'm protective of the Muppets, and I know just how good Michael Caine is. Perhaps the first post-Jim outing was always going have tone issues, but like Scrooge, I feel there was a better film in there fighting to get out.
6. Rich Little's Christmas Carol (1978)
Okay, this is a production that leans fully into the gimmick. Impressionist Rich Little plays all of the major roles as different celebrities of yesteryear (W.C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, Richard Nixon, etc.). It's kind of the Silent Generation's Who's Who, and I can't imagine the average Gen Alpha would necessarily get much out of it, but for the comedy history buffs like me there's plenty to smile about.
The concept just works. There's heart to it, not a lot, but enough to accurately hit the Dickensian template. The jokes land like they were written in 1978. And this is probably the only story that could get W.C. Fields to stop drinking. No notes, just a smile of approval.
5. Scrooged (1988)
So the gimmick here is Bill Murray doing Bill Murray in a Scrooge setting. Murray plays Frank Cross, a television executive who's masterminding a live broadcast of the Scrooge story. And par for the course, Frank is an asshole who doesn't know the true meaning of Christmas.
My feelings about Murray aside, he's quite good in the role. In the hands of a lower caliber actor, Frank's random "Bah, humbug" would have come across as silly, but Murray sells it. His emotional breakdown at the end is surprisingly heartfelt and feels earned in a movie that really only needs to parade out a series of eighties cameos like an in-house Macy's parade. And boy do they throw in with the cameos! A movie with the Solid Gold Dancers may not land with any impact today, but at the time it was a great punchline about commercialism.
4. Mickey's Christmas Carol (1983)
Kind of cheap casting when you already have a character named Scrooge step into Ebeneezer's robes but whatever. It's called Mickey's Christmas Carol because, like the Disney Studio, Mickey Mouse is at the heart. Prior to House of Mouse this was the original "Hey! It's THAT character!" of Disney's lineup, and casting Goofy as Marley sounds odd on paper, but the short film delivers.
Scrooge McDuck's Scrooge hams up all of his scenes, barreling through the story as fast as the short attention spans of toddlers need him to without sacrificing sentiment. The beats are all there, the orchestral score, the wisecracks, and one line of dialogue to remind eighties audiences that Pete was a character to be feared. If you need a gateway version of the story to hook young ones, this is your best bet. It was an instant timeless classic when it was released and it still holds up beautifully.
3. A Christmas Carol (1984)
You know, the George C. Scott one. Scott is a fine actor with one of those larger than life personalities that never really lets you stop seeing the actor for the character. But for all the roles I've seen him play it's never worked to his detriment. C. Scott as C. Scott playing Juror #3 in Scrooge's nightgown just works somehow. His Scrooge is less mentally unhealthy and more of a mean blowhard for the sake of itself. The ghosts really have to put him in his place to get him to listen, be it Present's sniping or Future's scare chord, but in the end his happy-to-be-alive meltdown feels the most natural of all of the Scrooges.
Audiences really love this one, and I'm not here to disagree. It's probably the closest thing to a 'perfect' translation of Dickens's A Christmas Carol out there. But I leave C. Scott at the number three spot because in as much as it's perfect, I find perfection boring and stifled by its technical precision when what we really want from a retelling is for them to just GO for it. Let's instead see the ones that broke the mold.
2. A Christmas Carol (1951)
Or Scrooge, as the titles are interchangeable by now. For a lot of people Alastair Sim IS Scrooge and the basis by which all other Scrooges are judged. As for me, I've got my own favorite, but I have to admire how Sim's Scrooge is almost wraithlike in appearance. When he turns good he scares the hell out of his housekeeper Mrs. Dilbert (where the f- did she come from?) in a sequence that reads very differently today.
Marley has a larger role in this version, if no additional lines, and it's an interesting (yet unneeded) insight into how Scrooge promoted himself from Cratchit's position to counting house manager. I also like how Scrooge protests to Present that he's too old to change his ways and Present's attention would be better aimed at someone else; it reads as a moment of personal responsibility, albeit wrapped up in his characteristic selfishness.
Sim's Scrooge is a multi-layered beast, a foregone conclusion for the Scrooge's that come after his, but Sim probably did it first. Moreover, this may have been the first Scrooge production that genuinely understood Old Ebby and had something to say about him that wasn't in the Dickens text. A fine Scrooge indeed; if you haven't given this one a watch do yourself the favor.
1. Scrooge (1970)
There can be only one. For me that one is Albert Finney, who embodies the presence and voice of Ebeneezer while himself being young enough to play young Ebeneezer to the hilt. Finney's Scrooge carries his pain closest to the sleeve as a sense of dark humor spills out in almost every one of his scenes. The good man is there, but the cold hearted one puts up the biggest fight. And while Past reminds Scrooge what joy feels like and Present straight up gets him drunk, it's Future who has to bitch slap the literal Hell out of him to get him to change.
Helping matters is a cast of the most insanely optimistic versions of Fred, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, and original characters scattered about the town to force Scrooge into being the straight man in his own film that feels mostly like a musical comedy. As someone with my own depression I can empathize with the Scrooges who feel like the world around them has gone mad with goodwill. His "I Hate People" number is relatable, even knowing full well that the failing is on his (and my) part. It's why this film's climax means so much to me, it makes him feel something wonderful for the first time in ages.
And what a climax! Yes this is a musical with a musical leveled-up ending. Scrooge probably has a stroke or some kind of brain damage from how happy he gets, but his constant laughing is infectious. It's not enough that he just helps out the Cratchits or donates to the charity, this Scrooge has to ends all his debts city-wide, involving all of London or wherever the hell we are (except for the one guy who paid him off the night before).
I challenge you to watch this film and not get swept up in the sheer passion of it all. The acting is superb, the effects are mostly effective, and the soundtrack is nothing but earworms. It's all there. A second scene for Marley to chew the scenery? Check. A dance number on Scrooge's coffin? Check. An interlude from the most badass bell choir in England? Do you need to ask? Open your cold dead heart to this movie and see how much it makes you like life. Thank you very much indeed.
