The Man Who Invented Christmas

    The Man Who Invented Christmas
    2017

    Synopsis

    In 1843, despite the fact that Dickens is a successful writer, the failure of his latest book puts his career at a crossroads, until the moment when, struggling with inspiration and confronting reality with his childhood memories, a new character is born in the depths of his troubled mind; an old, lonely, embittered man, so vivid, so human, that a whole world grows around him, a story so inspiring that changed the meaning of Christmas forever.

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    Cast

    • Dan StevensCharles Dickens
    • Christopher PlummerScrooge
    • Jonathan PryceMr. John Dickens
    • Justin EdwardsJohn Forster / Ghost of Christmas Present
    • Morfydd ClarkKate Dickens
    • Donald SumpterHaddock / Ghost of Marley
    • Miles JuppThackeray
    • Simon CallowLeech
    • Miriam MargolyesMrs. Fisk
    • Ian McNeiceChapman

    Recommendations

    • 80

      Los Angeles Times

      The Man Who Invented Christmas is a jaunty, amusing patchwork of truths, half-truths and pure fiction that cleverly combine to recount the story of the whirlwind creation of Charles Dickens' famed novella "A Christmas Carol."
    • 75

      The Seattle Times

      It’s a pleasant Christmas-season offering; both mild (read: family-friendly) and sweet.
    • 70

      The Hollywood Reporter

      There are many pleasures along the way, including the effective evocation of Victorian-era London.
    • 70

      Variety

      In addition to being a rather fine addition to the Christmas-movie canon, the film marks a useful teaching tool — a better option for classroom screenings than any of the previous “Carol” adaptations, once students have finished reading the novella.
    • 60

      Village Voice

      The movie — based on Les Standiford’s novel — is pleasantly simpleminded, often assembled from parts of other movies.
    • 50

      TheWrap

      As a portrait of an author on the verge of a breakthrough, this is a run-of-the-mill, occasionally clumsy biopic; as for contextualizing Christmas, it never explains how it functioned before Dickens and only briefly mentions how it changed after him.
    • 50

      IndieWire

      A well-intentioned but wearisome jolt of prefab holiday cheer.
    • 40

      Screen Daily

      The more that Nalluri tries to connect Dickens’ personal breakthroughs to those of his fictional character, the less authentic it feels. Inadvertently, this forgettable bauble ends up illustrating just how rare and precious true inspiration is.

    Seen by

    • Antihero