As I watched this movie (in its entirety) last night, I found myself screaming at the TV and actually getting up to leave the room out of sheer frustration.
The acting was almost uniformly awful; the music and lyrics sounded like advertising jingles and were totally inappropriate to the mood of the story; and the dialogue was both good and original...sadly, the original parts were not good and the good parts were not original (rimshot).
What pained me the most was to see the way the writers totally bastardized the story. One thing that irritated me right from the start was the fact that the story is not told from Scrooge's perspective. It is crucial to the story's unfolding that we hear and see ONLY what Scrooge hear and sees as he is transformed through the visits of the three spirits and Marley.
The writers apparently also decided that Scrooge needed a "better" reason to be a miser, so they decided that Scrooge's father was poor (he was not at all poor in the story) and imprisoned for debts. Scrooge grew up working in a shoe factory (instead of going to a boarding school, as in the story) and decided, like Scarlett O'Hara, that he "would never be poor again!" This completely shatters the richness of the original story, wherein Scrooge comes to love money in the absence of his father's love and attention.
A thoroughly despicable and awful movie. Some people deserve to lose their jobs over this stinker.
Zero stars out of four.
The acting was almost uniformly awful; the music and lyrics sounded like advertising jingles and were totally inappropriate to the mood of the story; and the dialogue was both good and original...sadly, the original parts were not good and the good parts were not original (rimshot).
What pained me the most was to see the way the writers totally bastardized the story. One thing that irritated me right from the start was the fact that the story is not told from Scrooge's perspective. It is crucial to the story's unfolding that we hear and see ONLY what Scrooge hear and sees as he is transformed through the visits of the three spirits and Marley.
The writers apparently also decided that Scrooge needed a "better" reason to be a miser, so they decided that Scrooge's father was poor (he was not at all poor in the story) and imprisoned for debts. Scrooge grew up working in a shoe factory (instead of going to a boarding school, as in the story) and decided, like Scarlett O'Hara, that he "would never be poor again!" This completely shatters the richness of the original story, wherein Scrooge comes to love money in the absence of his father's love and attention.
A thoroughly despicable and awful movie. Some people deserve to lose their jobs over this stinker.
Zero stars out of four.