Review of The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017) by Charlie P — 29 Mar 2018

Fed up with suffering three flops in a row in his writing career, Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) is desperate for a hit. When he slowly starts to write one of the greatest Christmas stories of all time, Dickens is forced to confront his own inner demons, stemming from a bad relationship with his own father (Jonathan Pryce) and even ends up interacting with Ebenezer Scrooge (Christopher Plummer) himself, if he ever wants to finish the book on time and save his career...

This romanticized version of the creation of A Christmas Carol, the most adapted book in the history of film does have it's fair share of entertaining moments, mostly in the scenes in which Charles and Scrooge interact with each other and the scenes in which Charles starts getting inspiration for the elements of the story such as the Ghosts, Tiny Tim and Jacob Marley from his everyday life in Victorian London. Susan Coyne's witty script and Bharat Nalluri's impressive direction, captures the feeling of the novel in terms of these references and the production design looks eeriely similer to Dicken's fictional London that served as the setting of most of his books.

Dan Stevens, despite going a bit over the top at times in his freak-outs over his writers-block, shines in his depiction of a young Charles Dickens, while Christopher Plummer is clearly having a blast playing a Scrooge that rebels against his creator.

Overall The Man Who Invented Christmas may not work as a biopic production-wise, But it's faithfulness to the spirit of the story, the chemestry between Scrooge and Charles being a blast to watch and it's exploration of the idea of how creators influence their creations, makes this one of the most interesting holiday films out there...