A Carol Christmas (2003)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

not as good as all the hype

An action-packed slog

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

A TV version of Scrooged, effectively, and the 1001th version of Dicken's A Christmas Carol! Tori Spelling is the eponymous Carol, a selfish TV Chat Show host.This really does have iconic TV actors, Star Trek's William Shatner, Different Strokes' Gary Coleman, Lois and Clark's Michael Landes, The West Wing's Nina Siemaszko and in an uncredited role, James Cromwell.Its the support cast that make the movie tolerable rather than Tori Spelling. I don't know her for her acting career, just for her being Aaron Spelling's daughter, and general tabloid fodder.The movie is typical TV mulch, and tries too hard to be a lot like Scrooged, momentarily funny, but not laugh-out-loud.So, yeah, One time viewing, its fine, but for repeats, definitely choose the superior Scrooged.

Certainly not just the 3rd female scrooge! What about Vanessa Williams in A Diva's Christmas Carol or Cicely Tyson in Ms. Scrooge, who was great by the way... Both worth watching! Cicely was fantastically mean and miserly, almost stomping on a child's fingers to stop him from picking a quarter up from the street. She got the quarter, of course. And Vanessa as the rock-star diva was cute too, another great variation of the classic story. I'm biased in that I would watch any variation of A Christmas Carol, including the animated versions, (I love the Mr. Magoo one also). It's an uplifting tale that can warm the heart of any Grinch, including me...

The whole plot..a updated version of Christmas Carol in which the Scrooge character is someone in the media intent upon exploitating the Holiday for business purposes,and gets their comeuppances...was already done,and done much better in Scrooged with Bill Murray. Tori Spelling is not very good as the Carol of the title. Spelling has actually done some good work in a few Indie films,she is not without talent....but every time she gets some cred from her work in small indie films she throws it away on garbage like this. The whole Bill Shanter/Star Trek bit was about as funny as a funeral. Attempts to modernize the Dickens classic are a dime a dozen,and this is one of the weaker efforts. All in all,a waste of time.

It has been a tradition since my first VHS recorder for me to collect several of the incarnations of the old chestnut by Charles Dickens, and I taped this one and "Karroll's Christmas" this year. Fortunately, when this one was run on the Hallmark Channel at the unGodly hour of 3 AM, I was spared having to edit commercials from it. This was, however, it's only saving grace. The writing was excruciatingly dull with almost no clever scenes to save it from being anything more than a teeny-bopper soaper like Beverly Hills 90210. In this one, a good man who was cast aside for her celebrity seems the only logical explanation for her transformation into a Scrooge-like TV talk show hostess. It wasted Dinah Manoff who just plays bitch goddess to the other bitch goddess Tori Spelling (who, by the way, had more coats of paint on her face than some colonial houses) and Bill Shatner is perhaps one of the few fun things in this otherwise dreary adaptation. Some of the best opportunities are wasted like the entrances of the ghosts. Aunt Marla's entrance could have been spectacularly funny in the hands of a decent writer, but this Christmas turkey didn't have one, evidently.Tori Spelling may be a lovely person, but she has all the acting skill of a mannequin, and that makes for a bad show all by itself. Yes, it was good to see Gary Coleman work again, but the script gives him nothing to do really except roll his eyes and spout truly lame dialogue.And what is most infuriating was that the transformation from Scroogedom to Tori "sweet and light" is as convincing as a passionate conservative. Now, if anyone wants to write the ultimate Scrooge tale of a George Bush and Karl Rove, we might have a refreshing change from the usual bad Christmas Carol Clones.I suppose if you're a fan of Ms. Spelling and/or 90210, this might be your cup of Christmas cheer. I'd prefer a stiff shot of scotch and a cold beer to wash it down myself. This one I just may cast away before it is with me here for a long long time.God save us everyone!