The Muppet Christmas Carol finds a great middle ground between the book and the Muppets, right down to having Gonzo (as Charles Dickens) recite chunks of text from the book directly to viewers (with Rizzo the Rat on hand to provide comic relief). (He’s one of the best Scrooges ever.) But it does allow, say, Fozzie Bear to step in as Fezziwig - or should I say Fozziwig - which is exactly the sort of tiny, comedic cameo where one of the sillier Muppets can be very funny. It doesn’t force the Muppet characters into roles they wouldn’t fit particularly well, so that Michael Caine’s work as Scrooge can have the weight it requires. The Muppet Christmas Carol is altogether stronger. In the end, it suggests that the moral of this story is mostly “Be nice to other people, okay?” which is a good lesson to impart but not really the focus of the novella. It’s surprising it comes together at all - there’s no way the slapstick of Goofy should work with the creepiness of Marley’s ghost, but it kinda does - but it’s always hampered by being a Disney production first and a Dickens adaptation second. The special’s tone lurches all over the place, something that is not helped by its 25-minute runtime. (Young had first played Scrooge McDuck in a 1974 children’s record version of A Christmas Carol that was largely adapted for Mickey’s Christmas Carol.) At the center is Alan Young as Scrooge McDuck, and his performance is the special’s greatest asset. The special borrows the familiar story elements and sends them through the Disney prism, so that, say, Goofy is playing the ghost of Jacob Marley, while Jiminy Cricket plays the Ghost of Christmas Past. Mickey’s Christmas Carol mostly chooses to make Dickens come to Disney, rather than sending Disney to Dickens. This 25-minute cartoon is the greatest A Christmas Carol adaptation ever made There are a bunch of possible takes hiding within this one tale, and each is as valid as the last. Which story elements from the original work do screenwriters choose to prioritize over others? And which story elements do they leave out entirely?Įven a book as slim as A Christmas Carol can’t be adapted with 100 percent faithfulness, and any given screenwriter must make choices about whether to underline the ghost story, the good Christmas cheer, the story of an old man’s regret, Dickens’s social conscience, or the occasional stabs at dry humor.
DisneyĮmily: When you’ve watched as many adaptations of A Christmas Carol as I have, you start to spot small, telling differences among them. Emily and Eliza on adaptation choices The Cratchit children and Scrooge celebrate a Christmas together. Sorry, Eliza, for mis-aging you.)Įliza and I sat down to talk about just what makes A Christmas Carol so timeless and what makes an adaptation of the story successful. (I doubt the copy desk will let me put that in the headline. A bit of a box office and critical disappointment at its release, The Muppet Christmas Carol has gone on to become a holiday classic for many.īut I wondered what a child of today might make of both Mickey’s and Muppet Christmas Carol, and fortunately for me, I just happen to know Vox’s esteemed critic at small, Eliza, who is 5 and 5/12. My childhood also saw the release of a different adaptation of this story that has stood the test of time: the 1992 film The Muppet Christmas Carol, with Kermit the Frog as Bob Cratchit, Statler and Waldorf as Jacob and Robert Marley, and the very human Michael Caine as Scrooge (in one of the renowned thespian’s best performances).
I loved this story, so I consumed as many versions as I could. And, of course, Scrooge McDuck has played Scrooge, opposite Mickey Mouse’s Bob Cratchit.
#Ghost of christmas past muppets crack#
If there’s a beloved troupe of characters, the odds are good that they’ve taken a crack at A Christmas Carol at one point or another. What surprised me to learn as a kid was that there have been many adaptations of A Christmas Carol, across all manner of genres and styles and characters.
#Ghost of christmas past muppets tv#
It also became a regular feature of Christmas TV for much of my childhood, turning up every year to retell its familiar tale. Nominated for an Oscar, Mickey’s Christmas Carol proved a boon to the studio’s animation division at a time when it was flailing.
I’ve loved it since I was a child obsessed with Mickey’s Christmas Carol, the 1983 animated short starring beloved Disney characters in the major roles. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens’s beloved novella about a miserly old man and the three ghosts who visit to teach him about the spirit of Christmas, is one of my favorite stories ever written.
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