Elf is on tap tonight - that's our family tradition.
Our family watched that last night. I had forgot I never have seen the whole thing. It was good to watch with the entire family on a Christmas Eve. It can be hard to find something entertaining for both the 12 and the 6 year old, adding to the fact that we had two 80 year olds in the house as well.
I make a point to watch some version of A Christmas Carol every year. This year is was the 1951 version, which I have not seen in many years. I first saw this later in life, long after I had seen the 1984 version multiple times growing up. I love that version. The 1951 version is... fine. It hits all the right plot points, but just feels like a film moving from one scene to the next. It's like the studio told ChatGPT "here's a story, write a film based on it."
I don't want to compare this to the 1984 version*, but I cannot help use that as the benchmark, as that was part of my Christmas childhood, nearly as much as It's a Wonderful Life was. It's the definitive version for me. Drawing comparisons, it falls short in every way. I do like the additional scenes in Christmas Past, as that fleshed out that stage of Scrooge's life well. But the acting, the drama, the "tenderness and depth of feeling" is all better in the 1984 film. I'm not a film critic, and it's late on Christmas day... all the hows and whys are much more clear in my head, they just aren't going to make it to my fingers right now.
*or the 2019 FX version, which is really hard to compare to anything. I love this film as well; at this point it's my favorite Christmas Carol film, and may be a topic for another post.