An American Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens' classic story is retold with limited charm in a TV effort.

The Fonz himself follows in the footsteps of everyone from Alastair Sim to Albert Finney in this pallid TV version updated to 1930s New England. I guess they decided to go with this when plans for an Anson Williams version of _Nicholas Nickleby_ fell through. The old-age Scrooge makeup is real phony-looking.

Awkward and so low-energy you'll think the movie will hit entropy.

I was surprised at how fast (and choppy) the first part of this went; it turns out it was trying to leave some time for the extra-long (but slightly amusing) ending. But instead of showing how the actions of a man impact his life and the lives of many others (even when, as here, the man isn't quite sure of his past), it seems to say that when we get older we're just going to do (almost exactly) what our elders did. Best part: Disco Spirit and the radio that plays without electricity.

This updated version of A Christmas Carol simply doesn't work. This is no energy to anything. The performances felt still, the updated dialogue and interactions were bland and cheapened the message of the story.

Nice script, cinematography and supporting cast (especially David Wayne, Chris Wiggins and Ken Pogue). And the low-key, droll approach to the ghosts is effective--as it was with the Ross Kemp version. The problem here though is Winkler: too vigorous and quick in both speech and motions to effectively portray an old man, and throughout lacking the screen presence to pull something like this off. And of course the prosthetics were quite unconvincing as well.