Review of The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017) by Matt G — 07 Dec 2017

I don't think we can avoid getting a filmed version of Dickens' immortal "A Christmas Carol" once every few years. It's a wonderful tale of redemption that fits perfectly within the larger Christmas narrative, and The Man Who Invented Christmas presents that with a unique twist. Unfortunately, the twist it gives it isn't nearly as strong as Dickens' tale itself. It's the "Saving Mr. Banks problem": wishing you were watching the subject of a film (the actual "Christmas Carol") instead of the film itself (Dickens' writing of it), which is as gentle and foggy as a London breeze, and very nearly as vapid.

Acclaimed author Charles Dickens (Stevens) was coming off a 3-book slump when he had the inadvisable idea to self-publish a novel about Christmas, which (SPOILER ALERT!) became a huge success. This story is told through the compelling mechanism of Dickens imagining his characters to life and wrestling with their decisions face-to-face, giving us the unique perspective of how a writer creates. Unfortunately, there's little naturalism in any of it. His initial visions and ideas are (ridiculously) exactly as they appear in the novel, and the movie keeps desperately forcing us to make connections between Dickens' real life and his story. And Stevens doesn't help, giving a performance more akin to Chandler Bing than Alastair Sim.

Sure, the production (sets, costumes) is beautiful. We're treated to gregariously be-wigged characters and smoggy old streets in this study of artistic inspiration and madness. Unfortunately, it's all stuck on top of a much-too-safe story on the plight of the rich man, that's just more proof that an artist's imagination is often more compelling than his life.