Reviews

Countless tales have been retold and reinterpreted but "A Christmas Carol" more than most on film, on television and on screen. "Well, all good stories deserve embellishment," Gandalf tells Bilbo in "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" but, at its core, an embellished story is true in meaning and intent of the original story.

Steven Knight's take on "A Christmas Carol" presents an Ebenezer Scrooge whose actions align with those of a sociopath, a man whose actions as an adult were forged by a miserable childhood and who finds pleasure only inflicting misery upon others.

And that is ultimately the biggest failing of this adaptation. While we can sympathize with a man who was neglected and forgotten by his father and sexually abused by the headmaster of his school as a child, it is impossible to sympathize with a man who is presented as having no redeeming values.

The Scrooge of the novella and various film and television adaptations present a man who has lost his way but is not entirely lost, from his love for his sister to falling in love with Belle and the love and respect he had for Fezziwig. Even by allowing Cratchit to take Christmas as a paid holiday present a man who is not entirely lost.

The transformation of Scrooge by the end of this film seems unlikely and rings hollow as we've watched the story of his life unfold over the course of three hours. We can't help but feel that he doesn't deserve our sympathy or a chance at redemption but deserves the scorn of both the living and the dead. Marley would seem to agree, saving Scrooge not from his self but saving Scrooge to save himself.

A grim, missed opportunity.

I realize that there are number of people who actually enjoyed this movie and in the right hands it could have been a powerful film but poor direction, over-the-top performances and some absolutely dreadful dialog make it almost impossible to take seriously.

Hands down the weakest link in this film is Damian Chapa. Don't get me wrong, Chapa has proved to be a fine actor over the years but his performance in this film is almost comical: His eyes flare, he pounds his chest, he over emotes. Chapa presents MiKlo as a caricature.

This film is also a good 45 minutes too long and the needless director's cut drags things out even more.

Worth checking out if you're a bad film buff, all others stay away.

I should first explain that this movie came out when I was in the 10th grade and John Hughes was the only director who seemed to understand what it was like to be a teenager in the '80's. We were also a bit paranoid about what the Russians might do, ticked that they were still in Afghanistan and then had the gall to boycott the Olympics in L.A. The Russians were the bad guys and in those days bad guys were a lot easier to identify.

So, combine all of these elements and what you get is RED DAWN. Russians were the bad guys, parents were helpless and the kids were the only ones who could save the U.S. -- or at least a small corner of it.

Did the movie work back then? No, and for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with the films premise. Other than the initial assault on the town at the beginning of the movie it takes over 40 minutes to get any sense of how bad things are around the rest of the country or how the Russian's managed to gain control of the mid-west with a handful of tanks, some Spanish speaking communists and a couple of helicopters.

This film is little more than an adolescent fantasy that collapses under the weight of a weak script and by-the-numbers direction. RED DAWN could have been much more but instead serves as little more than a companion piece to the ABC mini-series "Amerika," another hopelessly dated relic of the 80's.