Female Friday
The last decade of the 20th Century introduced the first adaptation of A Christmas Carol where the main character of Scrooge, at least, is portrayed 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, and A Christian Carol. (Did I miss any?)
2019 introduces two more in this newer tradition of adaptations – 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 as a stream from Amazon (free for Prime members). This version has been labeled as a comedy in Amazon and the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).
Warning: there will be a few spoilers!
Ellen Scrooge 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 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). 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, but she is too busy with her company to be bothered. 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 she will visited by three ghosts. 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 where there is a strong, loving bond among them, particularly with her mother. She is transported 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 Jernnifer and Ellen says, “She killed her!” There are scenes with Marley with Ellen when founding their company and with Ellen’s boyfriend who takes a backseat to her business.
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’s no longer a dream, she is transported to present events. She sees her sister and her 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, 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 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. She is taken 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 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 may not be noticed right away.
Unfortunately, this attempt wasn’t very successful. Given some of its concepts, I think this had potential and could have been done better 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.
There are some very ill-conceived parts that are particularly disturbing. The movie has disturbing imagery of violence to women – exclusively to evil 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 following scene 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, she is startled by the Ghost in her house. He is dressed in 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. I’m amazed these scenes were actually filmed and released as they were. I noticed that all the ghosts were men that were either physically or willfully coercive to a female that was frightened.
Finally, a confusing aspect of this version is that it is listed as a comedy by various sources, such as Amazon and the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).
Personally, I can only recommend this version for the curious and hardcore A Christmas Carol fanatics. I can’t see this version ever becoming a regular in my yearly watching.
