Movie Review: Scrooge (1970)
Synopsis: Rich miser Ebenezer Scrooge hates Christmas and his fellow man. On the night of Christmas Eve, he is visited by the ghost of his dead business partner, Jacob Marley, who warns Scrooge of three spirits that will visit him during the night in an attempt to convince him to change his ways before it is too late.
Who's in it? The movie stars Albert Finney, Alec Guinness, Kenneth More and Edith Evans.
Review: I wasn’t really planning on watching any Christmas movies yesterday afternoon. However, I couldn’t find anything good on TV and, since it had been a long while since I saw Scrooge, I decided to give it a chance. For the most part, I didn't regret that decision.
In all honesty, as a musical, this movie does lack a little something. The songs just weren’t that catchy and made the movie drag on a bit more than I normally prefer. In fact, I don’t think they added a whole lot to the film in general and it probably would have been slightly better had the writers just cut them out. Of course, to be fair, probably the only musical version of this movie I prefer is the The Muppet Christmas Carol and that's a hard one to compete with.
That being said, I did think this was a decent movie when they weren't singing and dancing. A big part of the reason for this is Finney’s performance as Ebenezer Scrooge. I’ve seen a variety of actors in that role, but Finney is easily one of the best. He played Scrooge in a way that both made him easy to dislike and made him somewhat scary in the process. The latter made him much more intimidating, something that made many of the scenes considerably better as a result (there's nothing worse than a Scrooge that just doesn't strike fear into people).
I was also somewhat impressed by the special effects in this movie. They were surprisingly sophisticated for a film that was released 55 years ago and some of the scenes, such as when Scrooge is with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come (Paddy Stone) and pushed into Hell, were much more intense as a result of them. In fact, I would caution parents about watching this with younger children.
Final Opinion: As I said before, I do think this movie would have been considerably better without the song and dance numbers. However, even with those in it, it is still one of the better film adaptations of this story that I have seen and one I would recommend watching if you are looking for classic holiday movies to watch.
My Grade: B
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Here are some reviews of other Christmas movies:
Movie Review: Haul out the Holly: Lit Up (2023)
Movie Review: Magical Christmas Ornaments (2017)
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