The Man Who Invented Christmas
PG
Main Cast: Dan Stevens, Christopher Plummer, Jonathan Pryce, Miriam Margolyes
Running Time: 104 MIN
Whimsical, slightly melodramatic and Dickensian, The Man Who Invented Christmas is one of those little Christmas treats at the bottom of your stocking – hard to find but worth the wait after you’ve opened the bigger flashier presents first.
Based on Les Standiford’s book of the same name, this is the story of how Charles Dickens (played by a delightfully manic Dan Stevens from Downton Abbey and Beauty and The Beast) revived the interest in Christmas in the 1800s by self-publishing his novel A Christmas Carol.
The book was written in just six weeks and came on the back of three recent critical failures.
With rising debt and the news that he is to be a father for the fifth time, Dickens is forced to confront his own past, present and future to produce his promised “Christmas book”.
It’s a production that captures both the real world and the world of Dickens’ characters with Ebenezer Scrooge (Christopher Plummer) joining him on most of his journey to turn the book from a germ of an idea (garnered from listening to his new maid telling stories to his children) into a much-loved book.
And while it’s not essential to have seen or read A Christmas Carol or any of his other novels, it adds to the fun as things around the author slowly but surely are incorporated into the book.
Stevens plays Dickens as a larger-than-life man with a hint of dark but a love of life who runs at full tilt as he tries to bring the novel to life.
There is so much emphasis on his wildly expressive blue eyes that they are almost a character in their own right.
Christopher Plummer, who is 87 and still acting, proves a perfect foil for Stevens with a lot of dark and a hint of love of life while Justin Edwards as Dickens’ ever genial advisor and best friend John Forster brings a gentle calm to every scene he is in and keeps the show on the road.
This is essentially a retelling of A Christmas Carol from a different, quirky and slightly melodramatic dark angle but that’s what makes it the Christmas movie we need in the current movie landscape of super heroes, crass humour and blow-them-up-shoot-them-down action flicks.
– Tania Phillips
