Christmas Karma: Reinventing redemption, Dickens And Muppets

0:00This summer, say I do. I am marrying a stranger. Like never before. Am I crazy? It's a whole new Married at First Sight on Peacock. Thank God I woke up in love. With new experts. My name is Dr. Lisa. My name is Paul Brunson. More couples. This could be the start of a very successful marriage. And more surprises. Or maybe not. Everything is just not enough. You're a little bit crazy. I don't know what's gonna happen. I want my fairy tale ending. Married at First Sight, now streaming. New episodes Thursdays, only on Peacock. chronic migraine 15 or more headache days a month each lasting four hours or more can make me feel like a spectator in my own life botox on a botulinum toxin a prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine it's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month it's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment prescription botox is injected by your doctor effects of botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing speaking breathing eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition.

1:00Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

1:33Ho, ho, ho, hello, and welcome back to Bah Humbug. This is your Christmas movies podcast, the podcast that gives Christmas movies all of the attention and careful thought and consideration that they deserve. You can take from that what you will. My name is Helen O 'Hara. I am your host as ever, and I am delighted to be back for Christmas 2025. Today we're going to be discussing Christmas Karma, the new film from Gurinder Chadha. It's another reworking of A Christmas Carol because you can't get enough of those apparently. But joining me to discuss it is author and comedian Mark Burrows. Hello Mark, how are you doing?

2:11Merry Christmas, I'm very happy to be back. Yay! This is your time of year, officially this year in particular, because, spoiler here, Mark has written a new book which is recently out which is all about Christmas number ones. Can you tell us about Mistletoe and Vinyl? Yes it's the book I've been wanting to write for most of my life where I get to properly delve into my obsession with Christmas music. It's basically about why is Britain the only country in the world that cares about what is number one at Christmas? Where does that come from and why does no one else care? America doesn't have a Christmas number one they just have a number one record that happens to be at Christmas.

2:50but America doesn't have Shakin' Stevens. America doesn't have Cliff Richard. They just have Mariah Carey and gun violence and I wanted to kind of work out why but also it's a sneaky social history whereby if you look at the chart in the same week every year for 50 years what do you learn about Britain? That's the sneaky kind of clever bit that I'm trying to sneak through and it's got silly jokes and facts about Christmas music and me just being very indulgent and I thoroughly enjoyed every second of writing it. I thoroughly enjoyed every second of reading it as well. I have to say it's it genuinely does get into that social history side of things and it's quite startling how things have changed in the last say 15-20 years you know compared to the 15 or 20 years before that where it seemed to be at its peak you know and everyone was obsessed with the Christmas number one yeah because technology has completely changed so that is the way we listen to music has changed all through the that whole Christmas number one period if you go back to the 70s right up to now the way we listen to music has changed and the way the charts are registered to change and that changes everything it changes the story completely so now it's this algorithmic thing whereby wham were christmas number one for the last two years and probably will be this year and possibly for the rest of time like like last christmas by wham is the final boss christmas number one mariah might get in there every third or fourth year but it's only going to be old songs from now on and because that's the way that the consumption of music is the algorithms just will service that and that will reflect the charts so it's kind of dead it's gone.

4:16It's a zombie now, which is also a good time to kind of sum it up. Dead and gone. Dead as a doornail, basically. A lot like Jacob Marley. Segway there for you guys. We should talk about Christmas karma, not a Christmas carol. I have to say, on paper, I was quite excited about this film. So Gurinder Chadha, for people who don't know, she's the director who made things like Bend It for Beckham, right? She can do really fun, mainstream comic films. She made Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging, which is a film I really enjoy. Blinded by the Light, which is the best recent Bruce Springsteen film, I would say.

4:54So I thought, you know, what could go wrong here? She's got Kunal Nayyar from The Big Bang Theory as her Mr. Sood rather than Mr. Scrooge. Good cast around him, people like Danny Dyer, who everyone loves since he was in Rivals. You have some strange people. It's an odd assemblage, But you have very promising names like, you know, Ava Longoria as the ghost of Christmas past. Billy Porter as the ghost of Christmas present. Hugh Bonneville as Marley, which you may not have noticed if you saw him in the film for various reasons. It all seemed so good. Did it live up to that promise for you, Mark? I mean, obviously it doesn't.

5:36Of course it doesn't. You're right. On paper, it sounds amazing. And I genuinely love Gurinder Cheddar. and the source material is basically bulletproof and there's always a way you can tell that story. And yeah, there are some interesting people. I mean, Billy Porter in A Christmas Carol, sold. Like just sold, I'm there. Also, like there was talk of it being quite Bollywood influenced and I thought that was really interesting. So on paper, I was all over this and excited. I mean, we should probably say this has got the critical kicking of all kickings. Like the Telegraph gave it zero stars and I'm not in that camp.

6:11And I mean, I don't think this is a zero star movie. I don't even think it's a one star movie. I get why some people might go two. Personally, I would go three. I'm not as down on it as most people seem to be. I actually think there's stuff in here to enjoy and it takes big swings and I always, always admire a big swing. I mean, there's a lot here that we can give a kicking to and we probably will. And a lot of it is deserved. But I want to just nail a relatively spirited, pardon the pun, defence of this, because I don't think it's quite as bad as some of the worst reviews of it have said. I think that's fair.

6:47One of my colleagues said that it was the worst film of all time. And I don't think that's true, but it's not as good as it should have been. Now, maybe part of that, and we should maybe talk about this first in light of your Christmas number one expertise and your musical expertise in general, the musical aspect. This is also a musical version of A Christmas Carol, which has been done a couple of times. There was the 1970s musical, which became an animated film about, what, five years ago with Luke Evans and Jesse Buckley. There is, of course, the great and unbeatable Muppet Christmas Carol. How does this stack up?

7:23There was one in the 30s. There's a habit with Christmas Carol films where every time Britain serves up a gritty one, America responds with a flashy one. That's kind of happened all the way through. So yeah, musical takes are not unusual. There was the one with Kate Winslet, where they actually released a single. There's actually been loads of it. Yeah, the musical aspect of this is one of the things about it I liked the least and I wanted to like the most. The pedigree of the songwriting suggests it should be better. I like Take That. I really like Take That. I genuinely do. I think Gary Barlow has written some incredible songs.

7:59I don't know what he was doing here. this is lunch break stuff for him. Shazney Lewis from All Saints. Again, although if you go through the credits list, she's not credited to many of these songs, so I'm not sure how much of her work ended up there. And again, the songs aren't memorable. I can't whistle one to you now. You've got some great voices in here. God knows Billy Porter can sing the birds out the trees. Boy George has a wonderful voice. They both have quite rich kind of purring voices and you can hear them here and occasionally you notice it. but we should mention Boy George is in this.

8:32I don't know why. I genuinely don't know why but Boy George is in this film. Can I just interject for a second? Even knowing Boy George is in this film I could give you 20 guesses and you wouldn't guess who Boy George has been cast as because Boy George who if people don't know was a huge pop star in the 1980s is playing the ghost of Christmas yet to come. So that is traditionally essentially death and he has a little bit of a makeup job to make him look a little spooky, but really it's just Boy George. No dialogue. No dialogue. He has no dialogue. He just sings and points. I mean, pointing, as we know from Spirited, pointing is the number one consideration for your ghost of Christmas yet to come, right?

9:14That is his job. He points at stuff. He looks spooky and points at stuff. So in that respect, Boy George actually nails this. Like he does point and he does look spooky, but I don't know why Boy George. It's not like he's a box office drawer. I mean he does have a nice voice and his voice is there and I guess he does have a striking appearance but just put somebody in a cagoule it seems so strange to have Boy George in that rough but there you go have Billy Porter play all three Eva Longoria doesn't need to be there either frankly yeah she is the ghost of Christmas past and she is a kind of mariachi ghost she's going for a sort of the day of the dead Mexican ghost of Christmas why?

9:53I think that's about multiculturalism and maybe that is also trying to appeal a little bit to the American market where you're going to have much more of a Latinx kind of community who might want to see it and it feels more in keeping with their lives. I think that's what it is. I think it's basically like multiculturalism, we're going to cram as much into as many different types of people, which is admirable. But I don't think, again, it is a creative decision that really works because it's baffling. It's completely baffling. And also it spoils what is basically the best bit of the film. Like the Ghost of Christmas Past bit is the objectively good bit of this film.

10:32I found that really powerful. For the Ghost of Christmas Past section, we go back to Mr. Sood, not Mr. Scrooge's past, Mr. Sood's past, and find that he's a refugee. He was part of the Indian community in Uganda who'd gone over under British rule and Idi Amin throughout and they had to be relocated. That's a really, really interesting, really powerful story that really works with this text. but you put in Eva Longoria wearing skull makeup. And again, I don't know why. It seems such a weird decision. It's a really strange decision. And you're right about that being the single best creative decision that this film takes.

11:05It feels personal. It feels earned. It gives such a weight to Sood's backstory, gives him a reason why he would be a little misanthropic and he would be a little lonely and displaced and all the rest. It's something that you feel in this movie, whereas so much of the rest of the movie feels like, oh, OK, we're just checking off the checklist of elements of a Christmas Carol story. That whole section, you've got young Skanda Aron playing young Sood, who's about maybe seven or eight. And he's just like all skinny little legs and skinny little arms running around with his best friend who's native to Uganda and just having the time of his life.

11:51and they're basically sort of permanently wandering around fields looking at giraffes as far as we can tell, but it just seems idyllic until this incredibly traumatic relocation to rainy, grey, depressing Britain, where suddenly they have to start from zero. And it's really, really powerful and really moving. And then you get another song sung by Bob Cratchit, Leo Souter playing him, who I think is not great. and no i mean the cratchit family in general like i mean we'll give tiny tim a pass but uh pixie lot is in this by the way pixie lots it i've got like the poor man's natasha beddingfield is is it this film i don't as mrs cratchit as mrs cratchit uh the poverty stricken wife and their poverty stricken family and their poverty stricken notting hill home which is like astonishingly beautiful i'm sure that's notting hill i'm sure that's somewhere maybe primrose hill maybe Portobello Road somewhere around there I know that I've seen that street like those are expensive houses well here's the thing because this is the big thing that I tripped up on as well and maybe it's because you know you you don't live in London anymore but you have I still do I was looking at that house going that is at least a million pound house at least that they have chosen a street that looks like the street where Paddington lives in the Paddington films now it isn't quite that grand these are like two-story houses rather than three or four-story houses like those were they are definitely smaller than that and i've done a bit of googling online and there are some streets in slightly cheaper areas like kentish town and things like that which looks similar i haven't found the street that they shot on yet as far as i can tell but anyway you look at it down yeah yeah anyway you look at it that is an expensive house and you are not convincing us of the need of the cratchit family i get that they were probably going for we want them to look you know modest poor but at the same time we want their house to look joyful and reflect the love and the sort of emotional richness that they have but I you know do that through the characters you can do that through the joy inside you can you can make them look happy like Bob Cratchit traditionally lives in Camden Town right Camden Town is full of council flats I know Camden Town has got lots of expensive stuff too but they could have kept it there they It could have done it in a flat and you could have warmth and joy in an inner, not that impressive looking house.

14:19And you could show rather than tell, you could still do it. You didn't have to like hit us over the head with how lovely it is. It didn't feel, didn't even feel Christmassy. It felt Christmassy. I might have looked the other way, but it doesn't even feel Christmassy. It's such a baffling decision because again, it felt like we're now looking at London through American nights. We're looking at the Notting Hill, Bridget Jones version of London. But this is a story about poverty. So there's a certain amount of realism and grittiness that she's layered into the story. So why not see that all the way through?

14:50I mean, I don't want My Christmas Carols to be overly, overly gritty and dramatic. They can go a bit far. The BBC one from a few years ago, which had some good bits, was for me too dark and went far too hard. Guy Pearce starring one yeah Guy Pearce is great in it yeah yeah the bit Jacob Marley gets literally pissed on in the first frame like it went a bit hard for me I don't need that but this is still an important story like you can still find levels of particularly at the minute any year pick any year and A Christmas Carol resonates about people who are less well off and abundance rejoicing whilst want is most keenly felt like it's really key and it felt like it sort of flirted with that idea and went for it sometimes and then you have like this idealized chocolate box bridget jones version of london where the cratchett family live in their million pound house and i know it's a very right-wing idea to say well why can't they just sell up and move but honestly if i owned that house and i was struggling financially and i maybe wanted a injection of money to send my severely ill child to a specialist clinic i might sell my million pound house and move into a cheaper one call me old mr tory over here which i'm not for the benefit of doubt.

16:04But yeah, there's been it's little things like that that make this not ring true. And we wouldn't be picking these holes in it if the whole thing felt satisfactory. No, I 100 % agree with that. And I think it really fundamentally takes you out of the film. And that's the problem with it, you know. Also, just little things like when at the very beginning of the film, we see Sued on his way to essentially chastise one of his clients. He's a kind of accountant more than anything else here. And the client that he's chastising is a market stall holder and he's telling him, I told you it would be a bad idea to depend on a Christmas market for all your income.

16:37But he appears to have travelled at that point to Winter Wonderland, which is this enormous Christmas market in Hyde Park every year in London, which must coin money hand over fist because the prices there are so high for every single thing. So I just thought, again, that's a weird choice. And fair play to them for getting the added sort of screen dazzle of Winter Wonderland. I guess they went in there when it closed in January before they started taking it down or something like that to get some of these scenes. It's not as busy as it should be. It's not nearly as busy, no. Which actually would have been better because the closest it gets to a Bollywood film is those sequences where it goes into a sort of street song and dance sequence.

17:18And I was like, if there had been more people in the scene, it would have looked a lot cooler, would have looked a lot more impressive. Like the sequence in the Albert Finney Christmas Carol, which has got the best song in that film where they dance Scrooge's coffin down the streets. I love that sequence they pay tribute to it in Spirited I keep bringing up Spirited because Spirited is the best Christmas Carol okay theory I think this film takes place in the Spirited universe by the way oh interesting please expand so if you've not seen Spirited Spirited is the was it what three years ago now yeah about 2022 I think yeah it's Ryan Reynolds and and and help me out here Will Ferrell thank you not a very famous person I can't think why I'd forget his name um but will ferrell is the ghost of christmas past present sorry and they basically do a scrooge on somebody every year they pick somebody and they they visit him with three ghosts or her and they change their lives right and we later find out spoiler for spirited that will ferrell's character was the original scrooge so in that story scrooge existed yes in this story danny dyer accuses mr sooth of being a scrooge implying that in this story in this universe a christmas Carol exists Scrooge wasn't a thing before a Christmas Carol Dickens coined that name I think I'm pretty sure so in order to be calling somebody a Scrooge you must be aware of the story of a Christmas Carol and that implies to me that we're now living in a story where the three ghosts are visiting somebody every year a different ghost from different departments maybe I don't know but it actually it totally works and and in this year they've picked uh this miserly old guy in in London because he's a perfect choice.

18:56But otherwise, it makes absolutely no sense for anyone to call him a Scrooge. Yeah, this is true. So then, but then doesn't that mean he should, I would have thought he would know the story, even if it wasn't big in his community in Uganda. He's been living in the UK for like 50 years at this point. Well, you've hit on one of the main problems with Spirited as well, to be honest. Well, that is also true, yes. Well, gloss over that because I like that film. But I mean, Sued's cultural background as well is another slightly iffy thing with this, because I don't really have a problem with somebody who keeps saying that he doesn't celebrate Christmas because he's not from a Christian background.

19:32That feels okay to me. How dare you not celebrate Christmas in your... Let's not impose our cultural holidays on other people's cultures. I'm not sure that's a good thing to suggest. It's a really weird one, because I feel like the film tries to have it both ways on that, doesn't it? It's sort of on several occasions drawing the attention to the fact he's not Christian he doesn't celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday but yeah it's very much trying to have its cake and eat it in the sense of saying well he's not Christian and doesn't have any obligation to celebrate Christmas but also he should be celebrating Christmas because he's a terrible person and he needs it in his life so that's an odd that's an odd choice yeah it wobbles across that line and it just about does it without being offensive in either direction like it's not actually actively problematic but again if i was more taken up with and swept along with this film i wouldn't even have blinked at it and i want to be swept along and taken up with versions of a christmas carol because it's my favorite book and i love a christmas carol adaption i'm like if every time a new one is announced i'm immediately excited because i was like brilliant what can we take away how is this going to be done i want good things from christmas carol adaptions because because I think it's such an important story and because it still has so much to say.

20:50And every year it does. And this film does do that. It does have things to say. About the refugee experience, that's a really current thing to talk about. One of the few times it dips into Dickens' actual dialogue is in the scene with his nephew and the charity collectors and the are there no workhouses, are there no prison stuff. Yeah. Which is the heart of the story. Like the fact that he believes that is the heart of the story. and then showing us his past absolutely speaks to all of those things it hits all of those beats and i think actually like scrooge scrooge's backstory is pretty good this gives him actually real weight to why why he's damaged by it not necessarily by he's damaged by his past and why he feels like this not in this especially christmasy way some of the best scrooge is the ones that really make scrooge damaged by christmas the patrick stewart one is brilliant for that you realize that christmas is the through line through every worst thing that's ever happened to him and I loved that about it and Patrick Stewart plays it beautifully but Kunal Neha less in this less so that's did you like him generally I did a bit like he's playing a lot older than he is right I looked up I was like how because we've I've seen Kunal Neha in the Big Bang Theory where his character is basically a young person and I know that's that show ran for a long time but I looked it up and he's uh five days older than me I'm 44 right he's five days older than me so um and he's it looks like he's playing at least mid-50s and it seems to have had a kind of a hard life at least for the first half so i guess maybe that's why but he plays grumpy very well and it takes you a while to realize oh that's raj from the big bang three because he's playing grumpy middle-aged man with a beard yeah i literally didn't realize for half the film because i knew i knew the name and i hadn't put it together with raj same for ages ages same I was like I know that why who is that who is it's such a different context and I liked him as the grumpy as the grumpy version of Scrooge and I liked him in the Ghost of Christmas Past sequence because actually I really did feel that he was being emotionally affected by the things he saw you really were seeing the pain that he felt as a child and you did see the sparks of remorse and like I thought he played that really beautifully actually and that's the hardest thing to do uh in this story and then any kind of emotional growth or change in his character seems to stop for the next third of the film and then suddenly he's he's all happy and smiles and new boy what day is this and like he goes into the the festive version of like of of scrooge of dude and there's been no gear changes like we don't i don't understand how he got from that point to that point we start the journey and then and then it kind of is almost reversed and frozen again and then we never see it again and one of the the arts of playing scrooge like it's played well is the dissenting characters like the the all-time best one i mean michael cain does it brilliantly but one of the all-time best scrooges is alasdair sim as in the late 50s i think yeah 50s yeah and that's neck and neck with the muppets for me that i think it's a gorgeous film and sim plays it so well because he's a great comic actor and he he puts the gear changes in you see him go from grumpy to delighted.

24:01I think Albert Finney does a really good job of it as well, actually. Michael Caine, incredible at it. You buy the journey. I don't buy the journey with Kunan there. I really want to because he's a very likable actor, but I don't buy it. I don't. He just seems to become happy out of nowhere. We go through the steps of A, B and C and then suddenly we're at Z and the rest of the alphabet has gone missing. And that really bothered me as well. I reluctantly agree with you on that. It is a problem with the film that it doesn't have the progression, like you say. It doesn't, it is very overnight. And I felt much more sympathy, I'll be honest.

24:34So the young Sud is played by Bilal Hasna, who weirdly I recently saw in a live read of Pride and Prejudice, which was native medical aid for Palestinians. And he was playing Jane Bennett. He makes a wonderful Jane Bennett. He gets less to do here. But he, I really felt for him because he's going through it. He is the one who is, you know, struggling against kind of 80s racism as a young man trying to make his way, trying to figure things out. We haven't talked about the racism in the film as well. Yeah. That's it's really it's really hits you in the face. It's deeply upsetting. Vividly. And that stuff, you know, again, it's not to say that that works in the sense of yay racism, but that really makes you feel for sued.

25:20and it makes you feel like this guy is perhaps not more sinned against than sinning, but he is sinned against and you would understand why he has put up walls and he has cut himself off from the world and he thinks that money is the only way to kind of make himself safe. You get that in both Bilal's performance and in Young Skanda's performance as the young Sud and I don't think that Kunal kind of carries that through fully. So that was a disappointment. Yeah, it's such a cliche to go, this are all things that were done better in The Muppet Christmas Carol. But all of this stuff was done better in The Muppet Christmas Carol.

26:00It really was. There's a bit towards the beginning, just before Doc Brown's number, where his rapping is synced incredibly badly to his mouth, where they're in Sued's office and Doc Brown's character, the rapper turned comedian turned actor Doc Brown, turns to Bob Cratchit and calls him a Muppet. and I was like I kind of wish he was like like let's not remind the audience of the film they wish they were watching but then again that's you know that's the gold standard and maybe it's an unfair standard to be reaching for yeah so a couple of questions coming out of that first of all do you think there were too many songs before we even saw a ghost because there are three songs before we even get to the ghost turning up if I remember correctly and I thought that was too many yeah you need two songs it should have been two you want an opening number yeah maybe maybe an establishing one maybe two but how much does Muppets Christmas Carol have that has two doesn't it before Marley and Marley yeah three seems absolutely unnecessary and they're not good songs that's the problem they're not memorable songs the first person you see singing in this film and I'm pretty sure about this I've only seen it once so I may have forgotten the first person you see singing in this film is Danny Dyer and he's auto-tuned out of recognition because I don't think Danny Dyer is known for his incredible vocal.

27:17Danny Dyer, a suspiciously reliable cab driver, whenever Sood wants a black cab, he doesn't summon an Uber, no, he puts his arm out for a black cab and it's always Danny Dyer and yeah, you see him singing first and it is not a good song and I immediately, I'd kind of forgotten the musical aspect was coming and then it was there and I immediately went, oh, oh, this isn't good. There are musicals I've seen in the past where I've gone, oh, the songs aren't great. And then I've gone back and gone, do you know what? No, there are some bangers here. Greatest Showman is a good example of that. I wasn't particularly bothered when the first time I saw it, but on second, third viewing, you kind of go, no, there's something to these songs.

27:55This one, ooh. I can't remember any of them are called. I can't remember the choruses. I remember Billy Porter looking brilliant, but you can get that from Instagram. Yes, he unfailingly looks brilliant. And again, even then, one of his backing dancers seemed to be singing along to the wrong track at one point. And God bless her. I'm sure that there was just some confusion on set that led to that. I do feel like in the gospel number in the church. Now, some of this and also, by the way, the people in the pews change around during that number. There's been some continuity stuff there. I will say I think this was a relatively low budget British effort.

28:31I think in order to get it made, you know, Grinder Shadows had to go out there and find American stars, find ways to sell this to America to try and get this money to get the film made. I think that's probably why we don't have enough dancers in some of the big crowd scenes. I think it's probably why. You can tell because as the film starts, how many title cards do we get? How many productions? Companies. The money has been spread quite far in this. And look, this is not something that's unique to this film. This is something that is true across the British independent film industry. like it is very difficult to get a film made.

29:01And I do want to kind of acknowledge that because I don't want to kick somebody for not having the time to go back and fine tune things and make everything work. But at the same time, like it doesn't work and to the point of being distracting. And that is unfortunate because we know she can do better. We know she can make very crowd pleasing, very fun films. And this doesn't quite reach the heights that you want it to. This is the director of Blinded by the Light. and I think Blinded by the Light is just a wonderful film. It's got so much heart and it does touch really important issues but does so with a lightness of touch and I enjoyed it so much.

29:40And obviously, Bennett Lightbeck is brilliant and Angerstones and Perfect Snogging is great. I've never seen a Gurinder Chaddiff movie I didn't really enjoy but Blinded by the Light especially, I think, is brilliant. And she seems to be having a really good time making this. You can spot her in one of the dance sequences and in a Christmas jumper having the time of her life and if you ever meet her she's a very joyful person there's a really great energy about her and she's very funny and she seems to be really enjoying herself uh dancing with the woman from the tui adverts uh who i spotted but yeah you like gorilla chadabrassa is brilliant and i want her films to be successful and i want her to make more films because she's she's a great voice in cinema and she's got a lot to say and she tells great stories and i wanted this to be so much better than it actually ended up being and you can see the bones of something else in it that's i think the frustrating thing that's why the zero star thing i feel is really unfair because there are ideas in this film and just having ideas puts you on one star it has something it really wants to say it understands the source material there is a voice in here that that is taking the text and doing something different with it and there is things to enjoy here so i have some sympathy with a two star review.

30:52I think a one star review is miserly, if you pardon the expression. I think a zero star review is insane, frankly. Like there are zero star films out there. I'm not saying no film deserves a complete critical kicking. I have certainly seen genuinely, genuinely hateful films of which this is not one. It really isn't. I do think if they had maybe saved the money on CGI Jacob Marley for some reason. Oh yeah. Yeah, queasy, awful CGI Jacob Marley. They could have put it somewhere else. With Bob Cratchit's house, that's one of the moments in the film where I was like, I don't understand your thinking here.

31:28This is crazy. Yeah, like you've got Hugh Bonneville. Hugh Bonneville's got a great face. Like put him in makeup, like just make him look a bit creepy. Put a little bit of CGI to make his jaw fall off. And like, you don't need to go all in on Jacob Marley. Like the Alec Guinness version of Jacob Marley is brilliant. and it's just makeup you can do it really well and they've got a great actor so why waste it i don't i don't get that i know and the budget wasn't there for really good cgi which means you get weird not quite right cgi and um why why wise words well listen we should begin to wrap things up so i think you've already hinted at this but just top of your head as an expert on a christmas Carol, what are the five Christmas carols that you would recommend watching this season?

32:19Oh, okay. Brilliant question. Right. Where do we go? So there is a silent version from the 1920s that is particularly good. And the whole thing is on YouTube. I think it's an Edison company one. It's really creepy. And the story is cut to the bone. And I genuinely think it's great. I mean, let's just get it out of the way. Muppet Christmas Carol is as perfect a version of a Christmas carols you're going to find the alistair sim version i think is as perfect as a version of a christmas carol as you'll find i think that's just it's absolutely wonderful none of these are american versions even the muppet christmas carols but filmed in the uk i think actually but um i think america tends to get a christmas carol wrong it always goes for the schmaltz and always goes for the kind of cutesy victoriana when you say dickensian christmas they're thinking twinkliness when actually it should mean poverty and death and then the best versions are the british versions that are really brutal.

33:11What are the other ones that are really good? And now I'm just going to completely contradict myself. I've got a real fondness for Mickey's Christmas Carol. Me too. The Disney, which is the first version of the story I ever saw. I think that was my introduction to it. And it's almost got almost none of the dialogue from the book in it, but it has absolutely all of the heart. And obviously Scrooge is played by Scrooge McDuck, which is perfect. Who wasn't originated for that? Scrooge McDuck existed in Disney before that. and they're like oh should we get to play scrooge at our scrooge thing do you know what let's have scrooge mcduck doing it uh mickey is bob cratchit perfect uh goofy is jacob marley love it absolutely amazing i actually have a lot of time for it and it's very charming and if you've got kids i think it's a really good one there's an animated version from the late 70s uh it won the oscar for best animated short that year uh it's got alistair sim reprising the role and it's quite short and the animation style is based on the style of the illustrations in the book and it is gorgeous it's absolutely beautiful it looks astonishing and it's quite creepy and the story's cut to the bone because it's only about 40 minutes long half an hour long so they they they really cut it down but they do it in a really in a way that i think is really effective and that version is really under celebrated it's not even the best alistair sim version of a christmas carol but it's actually very good and it's one that not many people have seen i actually have a weird fondness for most of them i genuinely do there are some terrible ones i'm not going to say every version of this story works but it's a very very difficult story to mess up it's such a fundamental text to our culture and it changes how we think about christmas because it brings in the idea of both commercialism and charity at the same time that is really at the heart of a christmas carol and that still is how we celebrate christmas it's that we are still thinking about abundance and wants at the same time like it's all there and it still can be told brilliantly on screen and it's worth retelling and worth revisiting and i'm not going to tell people not to watch this one because i think all the things that make a christmas carol special and important are in this film and sometimes they're well.

35:26It's just that the furniture around them is not often built to a standard that I would necessarily want. Delicately put. All right, we've had you on this podcast before, so I have previously asked you about your favourite Christmas films, but I do want to ask you about Christmas traditions. I always ask if you have any odd or unusual Christmas traditions in your family. Is there anything that you've thought of since we last spoke? Yeah, I completely forgot about this last time at home we have a Ronald McDonald Christmas bauble that came free in a happy meal in about 1986 and I don't think there are any other Christmas decorations that still remain from the mid 80s but we got the Ronald McDonald Christmas bauble and every year it goes in the tree and my mum doesn't even have a Christmas tree anymore she just gets a nice plant and puts baubles on it because she lives lives alone and can't be bothered to have a whole tree and tend to spend Christmas with one of us anyway but it still has Ronald McDonald I mean to say what you like about the commercialisation of Christmas.