IT’S CHRISTMAS, CAROL! (2012)

Balladeer’s Blog’s Sixteenth Annual Christmas Carol-a-Thon continues with a review of this Hallmark Channel adaptation of the Dickens story. 

IT’S CHRISTMAS, CAROL! (2012) – Well, to borrow from another holiday, I hold these truths to be self-evident –

*** Hallmark productions in the 21st Century are mostly bland and harmless. Never too good or too bad.

*** Adaptations of A Christmas Carol that set the story in whatever their “present day” is have been going on for so long now that the state of technology and the cultural attitudes depicted provide plenty of fodder for contemplation quite independent from the core story.

*** Not providing separate, distinct natures for the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come is like coming up to bat with one or two strikes already against you. 

All that said, I won’t be able to use my usual format for my reviews of A Christmas Carol since Marley and the Christmas Ghosts are all played by one person. And it’s not a case of a comedian or a chameleon-like thespian so skilled at crafting characters that it’s a showcase for their talents. (Picture Robin Williams doing different personae for the Ghosts, for instance.)

We’re talking one lone character appearing as all four spirits with no changes to them. Fans of the more urbane and wry Carrie Fisher – as opposed to fans who only liked her as a space princess – will love It’s Christmas, Carol!

For the rest of us, like I always say, A Christmas Carol is like pizza – even when it’s not done great it’s still pretty good. Fisher’s limitations don’t make this production unwatchable or anything like that.

It’s Christmas, Carol! stars Emmanuelle Vaugier as Carol, our Scrooge stand-in. She’s the typical grasping and covetous, tight-fisted hand at the grindstone figure, this time in the field of publishing. Carol runs a Chicago publishing house and treats her employees as badly as you would expect in this story. She even fires one of them on Christmas Eve.  

Fred (Carson Kressley) is one of the abused employees in this adaptation and rather than be patient and forgiving with Carol, he’s leading the staff in a rebellion against our main character. Typical of Hallmark telefilms the supporting characters are pretty much interchangeable, and the name Fred is really the only thing that made Kressley stand out to me. 

All the employees miss Eve (Carrie Fisher), the dead as a doornail predecessor of Carol as the head of the publishing firm. She’s not the usual grim and stingy Marley figure who helped forge the Scrooge figure’s unwholesome character. Instead, she’s more of a Fezziwig who loved Christmas and treated one and all with great kindness.

It’s possible that this change was made due to Carrie Fisher’s limitations as an actress, I suppose. At any rate, Carol treats her unremarkable employees badly and cares little for her mother, etc. so she’s well and truly emotionally isolated at this stage in her life. 

At a necessary schmooze-and-network industry party that night Carol encounters her lost love Ben (Tygh Runyan), a writer she dumped long ago because she felt he was taking too long to make it in the business. Carol may be alone because of her vicious personality but Ben seems to be alone because he never got over Carol.       

The big business aspect of It’s Christmas, Carol! put me in mind of the much better Ebbie with Susan Lucci as the corporate-minded Scrooge stand-in. One area where this telefilm manages to come close to Ebbie is with its “Scrooge meets Marley’s Ghost” scene.

Carol comes face to face with the ghost of her former mentor Eve in the Ladies Room, where she learns that due to budget cuts Eve is not only giving her a warning about her potential fate but will accompany her to the past, present and future.

From here, this version of the Carol is mostly by the numbers and barely registered with me. It may be that I’m just jaded due to all the variations on this story that I watch all the time, so people who have only ever watched a few scattered versions of A Christmas Carol would probably enjoy this much more than I did.

An interesting change comes in the Christmas Yet to Come segment. Eve not only shows Carol the typical unmissed and unmourned fate for our Scrooge but lets her see the much happier future she could still have with Ben, getting married and having children.

Sadly, Emmanuelle Vaugier’s performance as Scrooge isn’t very good. She goes from mean-spirited soul crusher to instantly repentant, but that’s a problem with several actors in the Scrooge role.

You know the rest. Carol redeems herself and brings some joy to all the people she previously terrorized, even reigniting her relationship with bland, unremarkable Ben.

If you’re a fan of the Hallmark Channel’s comfort food or of Carrie Fisher, this item may make your holiday season, so please don’t think I’m recommending that people avoid It’s Christmas, Carol! It didn’t appeal to me, partly because it felt like too much of an imitation of Ebbie. 

Others should enjoy it, especially the couple of obligatory, cutesy Star Wars references. 

FOR MORE VERSIONS OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL CLICK HERE:  https://glitternight.com/category/a-christmas-carol-2/