Movie Night: A Christmas Carol

There are over forty versions of "A Christmas Carol" and so I am offering my ideas as to which I prefer.  This is a work in progress and I will add reviews when I see another one.

**  "A Christmas Carol, The Movie" 2001.  I must admit, this is not me favorite version.  It does have Kate Winslett as a love interest to scrooge and she sings beautifully, but it doesn't have much else to recommend it.  It has a non animated section, which I enjoyed.  It showed Charles Dickens traveling to America, and reading the story with some changes. This part was well done.  When he tells the story it is animated.  The movie adds two mice, with the motivation of attracting children to see the show.  The mice just seem obnoxious to me and don't add anything.  In fact the change the tempo of the action.  The animation seems poorly done, although there is a long list of animators.  This is not the version I would pick to see.

***^ A Christmas Carol 1984 with George C. Scott of Patton fame.  Scot is a better Patton than a Scrooge.

Made for t.v. ****A Christmas Carol 1999 with  Patrick Stewart.  In all the viewing I have don, this is the one that takes first place for me.  Patrick Stewart is superb.  The movie is choppy at places with stops made for commercial breaks, but the characters come through.  The first ghost was not a woman and I thought this fit perfectly with the character.  The change was done a believable fashion.

*^A Christmas Carol 2008, animated.  This movie as shorter, and just missed the feeling of the story.  It had animated animals portraying the parts, and was two inmature for my taste. 

***Christmas Carol 2009, animated.  This is the Disney version with Jim Carrey.  The characters are so real with their animation, which is their strength and down fall.  It is just too much over done with the new animations.  It makes the characters scary, much to scary for children, and sometimes for me.  I cannot watch this with Tony

**Scrooge 1970.  This is a musical version featuring Albert Finney and Alec Guiness.  When I realized it was a musical, I had my doubts, and those doubts were confirmed.  How could Scrooge be a singer?  Although I enjoyed hi "I hate people."  I did not like the songs at the end, "I love Christmas" which turned into a big production numbers, just to have one it seemed.  Scrooge played Santa to the Crachetts, which didn't work for me as it was too drastic a change.  The anonymous Scrooge is more to my liking.  Alec Guiness lived up to his being a master of disguise, but his character seemed like a robot rather than a ghost.

*Scrooged 1988  Bill Murry as a t.v. executive.  This I give my lowest marks.  This movie was just too irreverent.  The only thing I found funny was Mary Lou Retton as Tiny Tim and her doing a tumbling run after being healed.

****A Christmas Carol: Scrooge 1951  This movie is available through Netflix DVD.  It stars Alistair Sim as Scrooge.  It is really the penultimate Christmas Carol in terms of telling the complete story.  Other versions cut short Christmas Past, but this does not.  It gives much more breadth to the story as a result.  The other ghosts also show more scenes than other versions.