Um Novo Conto de Natal

I thought I'd give this a try after seeing the trailer on nearly every Sky ad break throughout December.

It's a well shot, well acted, well-paced little TV mini movie. Suranne Jones is excellent, Rosie Cavaliero is hilarious & the whole show has a modern, funny yet warm feel throughout. Plus it's not too long either.

This seems to be another mixed-genre piece from Sky, it's colourful and funny on the surface, but it doesn't seem to do it justice treating it as a kids' movie as there are a lot of gown-up themes underneath.

Overall, Christmas Carole is a decent watch this Christmas, and a pleasant surprise!

Well no Christmas would be complete, without at least one version of Charles Dickens classic Christmas yarn a Christmas Carol, in this case the carol being played by Suranne Jones, a very successful business woman Who takes on the part of Ebeneezer Scrooge, she hates Christmas and everything it stands for as is told in the classic tale.

The ghosts of past present and future are played by stars of light entertainment. The past is represented brilliantly by Morecambe and Wise. Played by Jonty Stevens and Ian Aspinall, and if you only watch the show for one reason watch it for their performance because if your as old as me and remember Morecambe and Wise then you will realise how good these performances are. It goes a little bit downhill after that and we all know the story and how it ends, but the performances particularly by Jones and the ever reliable Mark Benton make this a good family watch at Christmas. 7/10.

Another modern updating of a Christmas Carol.

For about the first 20 mins it held promise, but then seemed to wither in it's impact, storyline & authenticity as it went on. Perhaps it was in part because of it's short running time (basically a TV movie, but only 66 mins in length).

I wouldn't say it was awful, it passed the time. The acting was generally good. It gave me the odd smile (mostly nearer the beginning) and with some clever ideas, such as who the ghosts that visited were, I wouldn't say this is a totally awful film. Would I rewatch it a second time? Definitely not - I was glad when it was over, and it won't be revisited next Xmas.

A bit boring overall if nothing else!

Christmas Carole (2022) -

As a huge fan of 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens, whether in book form or on film, I have seen my fair share of these "Alternative" versions too, usually tied up in some Hallmark romance or something similar, but not all of them good and actually quite a lot of them have been pretty awful.

As such I went in to the viewing of this one with some trepidation, especially as a lot of the British attempts at seasonal films, that I've seen lately, have been a bit poor to say the least and some of the cast didn't exactly inspire me.

I have to say though, that this adapted and modernised take on my favourite story was actually really good, definitely one of the better ones.

I could criticise the production for it's choice to utilise Mark Benton as Carole's Father, but that would only be because I don't generally like him in anything. In fairness, he played the part as required, whereas Jo Brand was way out of her depth as "The Ghost Of Christmas Present".

Aside from them however, even Nish Kumar in the role of "The Ghost Of Christmas Yet To Come" wasn't awful and Alex Carter, whom I have despised ever since he first appeared as Lee in 'Hollyoaks' (1995), seemed really apt playing Carole's Brother Ade. It was the best I've ever seen from him and I never thought that I would ever feel sorry for one of his characters as I did in this film.

Surranne Jones in the title role of "Christmas" Carole, did what was required of her too. The direction of the film meant that she needed to be a tad over the top, but it didn't offend me as others have before (Tom Arnold, Kelsey Grammar and Jim Carrey to name but a few).

Although I wasn't sure how it might translate over the pond, I loved the nods to British Christmases past with the use of 'The Snowman' (1982) and 'Morecambe & Wise'.

I actually thought that the guy playing Eric Morecambe (Jonty Stephens) really nailed it and even Ernie Wise (Ian Ashpitel) sounded just like he should.

I also liked the way that they updated things and adjusted some elements to fit a more technological time, but I really hoped that the poor woman playing Jackie Marley (Rosie Cavaliero) had prosthetics applied and didn't actually go through the ordeal of plastic surgery to look like she did.

Okay, so it was a bit cheap in places, but it contained a modern message about consumerism, as well as a word about family estrangement and the consideration of others feelings and finding out what was real, before making assumptions. A lot of that was covered in the source novel and in the films more true to that material of course, but the production were clever here to adapt to a world that is in trouble and change the messages accordingly.

790.21/1000.

Carole is a tough, merciless businesswoman, taking everyone for granted, driven only by one thing, money, on Christmas Eve she gets a chilling awakening.

Scrooge retold for 2022, now I'm not always sold on the modern retellings of classic stories, sometimes things can get a little lost, but this actually worked. Quite funny in parts, with a few nice surprises in store.

I loved The Morecambe and Wise sequences, very funny, wonderfully realistic, Jonty Stephens and Ian Ashpitel were excellent.

Suranne Jones is a class act, I'm a real fan of hers, no way would she have taken this on if it had been a Christmas turkey, I thought she did a great job here.

Ok, so the special effects were a bit dodgy it's fair to say, but nobody is here for those, it's all about the story.

Surprised me how good it actually was, 8/10.