The last decade of the 20th Century introduced the first adaptation of A Christmas Carol portraying the main character of Scrooge, at least, as a female instead of male. The 1990’s gave us at least two: first 1995’s Ebbie or Miracle at Christmas: Ebbie’s Story, followed by 1997’s Ms. Scrooge. Many have since followed: A Diva’s Christmas Carol, A Carol Christmas, It’s Christmas, Carol, All-American Christmas Carol, Christmas Cupid, A Christian Carol, Every Day is Christmas, Second Chance at Christmas, and A Nashville Christmas Carol. This year, the disturbing Carol’s Christmas joins the ranks ( (Did I miss any?)
There were two more in this newer tradition of adaptations introduced in 2019. They were: 2nd Chance for Christmas and A Christmas Carol. Tonight, I watched the new A Christmas Carol. Unlike all of its predecessors, this one keeps the traditional title. This is an independent production, made available to view on Amazon. It used to be free to Amazon Prime members, but there is now a rental fee for all. Amazon and the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) has labeled it as a comedy in. Note: it is NOT!
Warning: there will be a few spoilers!
Big Pharma Scrooge
Ellen Scrooge (Kate Katzman) is a young, very successful owner of a large pharmaceutical company based in Miami, Florida, USA. All of the Scrooge-like tendencies are here: her lack of charity, bad treatment of her employees, dislike of Christmas, estranged family, and general nastiness.
On Christmas Eve, Ellen is nervously preparing for a take-over of her company, but it will still mean multi-billions in personal gain for herself. Her company’s co-founder and business partner, Marley, has been dead due to having a heart attack in his office. This is another version where Marley died only a year ago on the day instead of the traditional seven. (This was also done in 1995’s Ebbie). Her employees fear her wrath; she has no problem with her personal mistreatment of them. This is especially true for Roberto (this version’s Bob Cratchit played by Reinaldo Gonzales).
What’s interesting here is that while Ellen is much younger than her source character, Roberto is much older. The much overworked and abused Roberto also cares for his sick grandson, Tim. She has a younger sister, Jennifer, that contacts her with an invitation to spend the holidays together. However, Ellen is too busy with her company to be bothered with family. As she goes for an evening jog on Christmas Eve, she encounters the ghost of Marley, popping out of her mobile phone much like a genie from a bottle! Marley warns her of the afterlife fate that awaits her and tells her three ghosts will be visiting her. As soon as she signals for her car on her mobile phone, she immediately encounters the Ghost of Christmas Past in the guise of a young man in need of assistance.
She sees her childhood self with her parents at Christmas. There there is a strong, loving bond among them, particularly with her mother. The Ghost brings her slightly forward to another childhood Christmas with her father holding her infant sister. Ellen is unhappy with the gift her father gave her and announces how much she hates her baby sister, Jennifer. Her mother died of an illness after giving birth to Jennifer and Ellen says, “She killed her!” There are scenes with Marley and Ellen when they were founding their company; in like manner, there are other scenes with Ellen’s boyfriend who takes a backseat to her business priorities.
After the visits to her past, she wakes in her bed during the day. Thinking she had an odd dream, she encounters the Ghost of Christmas Present sitting in her living room waiting for her. Realizing it was not a dream, the Spirit transports her to view present events. She sees her sister and her sister’s spouse whom Ellen has never met. She learns her sister keeps a blind faith that Ellen will show up to spend time with them despite her husband’s realism. Ellen sees how emotionally disappointing she has been to her sister.
Ellen also learns that one of her present employees, Santiago (Alex Jerome Garcia), is actually in love with her. Finally, she sees Roberto caring for Tim, his bedridden grandson. She learns from the ghost that a medicine discontinued by her own company because it wasn’t profitable is the only thing that can make Tim well. Not only Tim, but thousands of others.
Ellen once again awakes in her bed and encounters the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. The Ghost takes her to “the next Christmas,” insinuating it is a year in the future. First, she sees Roberto mourning the death of his grandson, Tim. She then learns of her own death when she sees her employee secretly in love with her, Santiago, crying in front of her picture. After encountering querying ghost voices, the sequence ends with Ellen pleading she wants to live.
When she wakes in her bed on Christmas morning, she is a changed woman. She visits her sister, meets her brother-in-law, and apologizes to her sister for the past. On December 26, Ellen greets her employees with smiles and gives raises. She opens the door to begin seeing Santiago after office hours while Roberto gets a raise, the medicine his grandson needs, and helping the company to donate to charities.
Despite the modernization, this adaption follows the basics of a traditional A Christmas Carol, many that one may not notice right away.
Unfortunately, this attempt wasn’t very successful. Given some of its concepts, I think this had great potential but it really fell flat. The acting is often mediocre. Some characters and/or their situations seem underdeveloped. One thing I thought was very original, and sadly realistic, is the suicidal Roberto after his grandson’s death. Ellen encounters him in his despair and she runs from the scene just a he puts a gun to his head.
Not Female Friendly
There are some very ill-conceived parts that are particularly disturbing. The movie has disturbing imagery of violence to women – exclusively to bad, pre-reformed Ellen, actually – but that doesn’t change that these are bad decisions. During Ellen’s encounter with Marley’s ghost, he puts her on the ground with a choke hold using his hand to force her to see the Wandering Spirits. While one is wondering why a woman like her would go out jogging alone at night, the scene that followed with the ghost of Christmas Past almost flowed naturally in expectation. The Ghost of Christmas Past gets into her waiting car and he beckons her to get in with him. I wasn’t the only one viewing that thought it was the scenario for a potential rape!
Her encounter with the Ghost of Christmas Future is the worst and it’s disturbing. She is awakened by pounding on her door. After seeing no one is there, the ghost startles her as she sees him sitting in her house. His apparel is all black, including full face covering hood, goggles, and black gloves. She runs screaming but he chases her down her hallway, knocks her down, and drags her! He then takes her by her throat to make her follow. For all intents and purposes, it’s too much like a home invasion rape scene. Her last scene with the Ghost has him choking her to death with one hand as she begs for her life saying she wants to live.
It seems, whenever a Ghost wants Ellen’s undivided attention, they achieve it via violent force by putting her in disturbing choke-holds.
I’m amazed the creators actually filmed and released these scenes as they were. I noticed that all the ghosts were men that were either physically or willfully coercive to a female that was frightened.
Personally, I can only recommend this version for the curious and hardcore A Christmas Carol fanatics.