Not being au fait with Mister Magoo before, I found the experience of watching his Christmas Carol to be a curiosity - although not a resounding success.
The framing device of this being a "play within a play" seems a little redundant - especially when one considers "Mickey's Christmas Carol". In that animated short, the audience was simply expected audiences to believe in the "Dickens' reality" without the need to be reminded of the legacy of the Disney characters. When the camera pulls back in Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol to reveal the "audience", it does distance us from the source material.
And the source material, for what it's worth, is surprisingly faithful to Dickens. Whole chunks of dialogue are lifted from the novella and it's here where the film starts to shine.
I'm less keen on the songs which aren't nearly as toe-tapping as they need to be, especially when the addition of these is at the expense of, amongst other elements, Scrooge's nephew Fred - a fairly key part of the story.
One further oddity; the ghosts appear in a different order. We get the present, the past and the yet-to-come. I can think of no logical reason to switch the present and the past and presume it may have come down to the timing of these sequences. It doesn't really effect things too negatively, but it does feel like a rather obtuse decision.
There are better animated offerings of A Christmas Carol (seek out the Oscar winnings 1971 version with Alastair Sim for one) but this is a nice, gentle, introduction to the story for youngsters.
The framing device of this being a "play within a play" seems a little redundant - especially when one considers "Mickey's Christmas Carol". In that animated short, the audience was simply expected audiences to believe in the "Dickens' reality" without the need to be reminded of the legacy of the Disney characters. When the camera pulls back in Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol to reveal the "audience", it does distance us from the source material.
And the source material, for what it's worth, is surprisingly faithful to Dickens. Whole chunks of dialogue are lifted from the novella and it's here where the film starts to shine.
I'm less keen on the songs which aren't nearly as toe-tapping as they need to be, especially when the addition of these is at the expense of, amongst other elements, Scrooge's nephew Fred - a fairly key part of the story.
One further oddity; the ghosts appear in a different order. We get the present, the past and the yet-to-come. I can think of no logical reason to switch the present and the past and presume it may have come down to the timing of these sequences. It doesn't really effect things too negatively, but it does feel like a rather obtuse decision.
There are better animated offerings of A Christmas Carol (seek out the Oscar winnings 1971 version with Alastair Sim for one) but this is a nice, gentle, introduction to the story for youngsters.