This is the first entry of the year for a version of A Christmas Carol that is a first-time viewing for me.

With a 2019 creation date, this short independent offering had only appeared as an Amazon Prime offering this year.

I never approach any first-time viewing of A Christmas Carol with anticipating dislike or expecting a negative reaction. I saw some viewer reviews on Amazon before starting to play. They were generally bad but I don’t let reviews, professional or viewer, ever deter me. Regardless, my own viewing justified their reaction.

I always like to try to find something positive I can give credit to. Alas, not in this case. Running at only 40 minutes, this has nothing going for it. It is poorly adapted, badly acted, and amateur production values.

In the opening credits and at the beginning are immediately seen the mix of Victorian costume and contemporary props and miscellaneous. At the start, I thought this version was going for a purposely anachronistic adaptation which I think would have been original and interesting. But that was quickly shattered as it was revealed it was a modern-day adaptation. Many of the characters were wearing Victorian clothing because there is a Victorian festival taking place. While is supposed to be modern-day, the dialog is a very bad adaption from Dickens’ text that doesn’t fit at all. As it drags on, the “Victorian” costumes are bad. The ghosts are ridiculous. There is a modern dress narrator sitting with a book to tell us the story. The books pages never turn for the duration. The scenes with the Ghost of the Future and Scrooge’s reclamation are dominated by the narrator instead of being acted out as if they ran out of their budget.

Give this one a pass!