The Man Who Invented Christmas (PG)
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Caution: spoilers.

This came out in 2017. I first watched it in 2021. Before I watched it, I thought I'd put my review under "based on a true story", but while watching it I thought it was a bit too fanciful for that, so I thought maybe "period pieces", but ultimately it was obvious it could only go under "holiday movies".

Of course we all know that Charles Dickens didn't actually invent Christmas. But as hard as it may be to believe in this day and age, at the time he wrote A Christmas Carol, in 1843, Christmas was considered a rather minor holiday. His story wasn't the only thing that revived enthusiasm for Christmas, but it was certainly a major factor. It begins with Dickens enjoying the great success of his novel "Oliver Twist". Then it flashes forward to late in 1843, with Dickens facing writer's block and financial difficulties after his last three books did poorly. Eventually he gets the idea for what will become "A Christmas Carol", though it takes him some time before he settles on that name. Meanwhile, we see and hear obvious inspirations for the story all around Dickens. (I'm sure that's been done in many movies and other media, though it mostly puts me in mind of the short film George Lucas in Love.) Once he comes up with the name "Scrooge" for his main character, Scrooge begins appearing to him (played by Christopher Plummer), and arguing with him about the book. Soon other characters also begin appearing to him. He also seeks the advice of a girl named Tara, who works for him as a nanny, or something. But he's distracted from his writing when his parents arrive to stay with him for awhile. Also, his publishers have no interest in a Christmas story, so Dickens decides to publish it himself (which puts me in mind of a TV movie watched not long before I saw this movie, The Dreamer of Oz). He's aided in his efforts by a friend named John Forster, who seems to act as a sort of unpaid literary agent, I guess.

Throughout most of the movie, Dickens remains adamant that Scrooge cannot be redeemed, which makes it impossible for him to think of an ending for the book. And he's on a strict time limit, because it needs to be printed in time for Christmas. (The whole time he's writing takes six weeks.) The interesting thing is, we begin to see Dickens acting more and more like Scrooge himself. From the start of the movie he seemed like a very good man, who empathized with the plight of the poor. But he comes to treat everyone around him rather badly, out of frustration with his writing. And he finally decides Scrooge can change, which allows him to finally finish the book just in time. (I do find it odd, though, that he must have written scenes that humanized Scrooge before he intended for him to change his ways, which I find it hard to imagine he would have done without intending all along for that to happen. Certainly he didn't have a chance to rewrite the earlier chapters after making that decision. But whatever. I guess those scenes could have been meant just to explain Scrooge's miserly ways, without actually laying the groundwork for his eventual redemption.) Anyway, his book turns out to be a huge success, and inspired people in real life to be more generous around the holidays. So of course Dickens is finally happy, and reconciles with various people in his life who he'd been pushing away, including his father, and his wife, and Tara, and Forster.

Well, as often happens, I feel like I've given away too much of the plot while simultaneously feeling I haven't said enough about it. There may be things I meant to say when I was watching it, which I've already forgotten. But at this point I don't know what else to say, except that I liked the movie rather a lot. Mainly for the parallels between Dickens and Scrooge. Oh yes, I wanted to say that it was as if Dickens himself experienced the plot of his book in his real life, making the movie not just a fanciful biopic, but a meta parody of the book itself. Which I liked about it.