Ebeneezer Scrooge (Simon Callow) is a cold hearted miser who makes no secret of his contempt for the holidays as he runs his moneylending services with no room for compassion or humanity. Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his deceased partner, Jacob Marley (Nicolas Cage) who is now condemned to wander the Earth in the shackles he forged in life and tells Scrooge that a similar fate awaits him with an even longer and heavier chain. Marley offers Scrooge a chance to avoid his fate by telling him three ghosts, the Ghosts of Christmas Past (Jane Horrocks), Present (Michael Gambon), and Future who show Scrooge his long forgotten past, its effects on those in the here and now, and what may happen if he continues on his course unaltered.
Christmas Carol: The Movie is a 2001 animated adaptation of the Charles Dickens novella A Christmas Carol directed by Jimmy Murakami who'd previously worked as a supervising animator on the iconic short The Snowman as well as directing When the Wind Blows. The film was released in the UK in 2001 where it underperformed making a mere $200,000 against an estimated 6 million Pound budget and with the exception of Norway the film went direct-to-video elsewhere including the United States where it would be released by MGM in 2003 with little fanfare. What critics who actually bothered to see the film were primarily negative in their reception and to this day the film remains one of the more forgotten and obscure adaptations of this material as there's really not much here that wasn't done better in either prior adaptations or ones that came afterwards.
While there is a certain appeal to some parts of the animation per the standards Murakami set for himself in The Snowman and When the Wind Blows, the animation itself feels like it's slightly sloggy with the characters' motions often feeling as though they're in motion through molasses. There's also some instances where the character designs fall into the uncanny valley with some attempts to make the humans more realistic looking resulting in some really unappealing aesthetics such as with the ghost of Christmas Past. In terms of the writing, the film does hit many of the major beats of the story, but issues with the pacing, placement of certain scenes, or added elements end up undermining the integrity of the narrative. The movie takes a really long time before it actually even gets to the arrival of the ghosts with the opening 30 minutes dedicated to establishing what Scrooge's lost love Belle played by Kate Winslet is doing with a hospital, antics involving two mute mice characters to whom Scrooge is uncharacteristically nice to, and there's no real buildup to the appearance of Jacob Marley whose appearance now comes before the collectors for the poor in a strange decision. Once we go through the three ghosts everything feels oddly compressed and rushed but also like we're going nowhere as there's a lengthy bit of animation done in the same style as The Snowman flight scene where Scrooge and the ghost of Christmas present sprinkle goodwill from the ghost's torch rather than actually looking at the present. But easily the biggest failure of the film lies at the end where the cathartic ending where Scrooge mends his ways feels trimmed down considerably and is lacking in the jovial spirit one typically associates with that ending.
Christmas Carol: The Movie is a not particularly impressive take on this story and there's a reason most aren't even aware of its existence. Aside from the "wha?" factor of having Nicolas Cage voice Marley this version of A Christmas Carol isn't particularly well told or well-acted and the animation doesn't do much service to this material.
