Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol Blu-ray Movie Review

This 1962 holiday classic is a charming take on Dickens' immortal tale.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 28, 2010

Many of you reading this, perhaps even most of you, were not even a gleam in your parents’ eyes in 1962, but I have it on the best authority times were different back then. Television was still in its relative adolescence, as odd as that might sound, with only three major networks and with a relative sameness in fare. Sitcoms, westerns, and variety shows ruled the airwaves, but a relatively recent phenomenon was beginning to take hold: the prime time cartoon. The Flintstones had premiered two years previously, and their space age cousins, The Jetsons, were blasting off for their lone prime time season in 1962-63. Beany and Cecil was also being rerun in the evenings and kids and grownups could also catch Rocky and Bullwinkle on Sunday afternoons a little before official prime time listings began at 7:30 Eastern time. But with all this animated activity, there still had not been an animated holiday special until Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol debuted exactly one week before Christmas, 1962, on NBC. The show quickly became a holiday staple, and for decades afterward, it was rebroadcast regularly on all three major networks before achieving a healthy second life on cable and home video releases.

Charles Dickens’ immortal classic has had a glut of both large and small screen adaptations through the years. Everyone seems to have their favorite version, with Alistair Sim’s 1951 black and white film usually taking top critical honors. For personal reasons probably having little to do with the film’s instrinsic quality itself, I’ve always loved the 1970 musical version, Scrooge, with Albert Finney in one of his most remarkable performances. But of all the many versions which have tumbled through the airwaves or flickered through a lens, none is perhaps more odd, or more oddly endearing, than Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol, which holds a very dear place in a lot of people’s hearts. Whether or not this is due to the innate nostalgia which clings to the holidays is anyone’s guess, but memories forged around Christmas tend to last a lifetime, and anyone who saw this special as a youngster in any of its repeated broadcasts probably has never forgotten it. Does the special actually hold up after all these years, especially for a new generation at least semi-afflicted with attention deficit disorder? The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is yes.

This particular Christmas Carol both twists things at least slightly from the original (the Ghost of Christmas Present appears first, and some of the scarier elements of Dickens’ original story have been whitewashed) while at the same time remaining amazingly close to Dickens in both language and overall spirit. Though this special utilizes a sort of needless framing device (often excised from modern broadcasts to make room for more commercials), with Magoo a Broadway star actually performing A Christmas Carol, once Dickens’ story itself takes off, we get few references to Magoo as Magoo and instead we’re smack dab in the 19th century world of Ebenezer Scrooge and his miserly misadventures.

This semi-musical is notable for a brief but enticing song score by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill, a team who would take Broadway itself by storm a little over a year later with Funny Girl. In fact it’s long been speculated that the team wrote “People” for Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol, and later interpolated it into the Streisand starrer, but this myth has been pretty definitively debunked by Styne’s biographer. Jule Styne was one of the great melodists of the Broadway stage, able to deliver a sometimes subtle sophistication within the relative confines of the traditional 32 bar popular song. While he’s probably best remembered for the classic Gypsy (as well as Funny Girl), his career is really amazingly varied, including everything from Carol Channing’s Gentleman Prefer Blondes (“Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” is a Styne standard) to yet another animated special which came a couple of years after Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol, The Dangerous Christmas of Red Riding Hood (also co-written with Merrill).

If this Styne and Merrill score isn’t exactly as sophisticated as their Broadway output (Merrill was also a composer, best known for his musicalization of the Leslie Caron film Lili, Carnival), they contribute a charming and effortless sounding set of tunes that mostly fits the ambience of this reworked Christmas Carol. One fairly glaring exception is the first iteration of “Ringle, Ringle,” wherein Scrooge counts his money. Magoo as Scrooge here is positively giddy with excitement and dare I say happiness as he fingers his coinage, certainly not the sinister and darkly pessimistic greedy elder of Dickens. But when this song score works well, as it does in “Winter Was Warm,” it brings a surprising degree of musical elegance and lyrical eloquence to a television production, especially one marketed mostly toward children.

This is a bright and colorful, if sometimes rather spare, UPA production which sports that smaller studio’s penchant for angularity and graphically representative backgrounds. In fact it’s kind of interesting to compare UPA’s output with the more “modern” Disney approach that began a few years earlier with Sleeping Beauty. Aside from Magoo himself, who retains his circular rotundity, a lot of Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol is a whirl of colliding trapezoids and rectangles, with a really interesting and distinctive look. While this is never going to win any awards for gorgeously sumptuous animation, it perfectly captures the sort of lunatic ambience that was filling the airwaves back then, especially with regard to Jay Ward’s productions. Some of the segments, especially the opening Broadway sequence and, later, the Ghost of Christmas Future’s trip to a weirdly colorful cemetery, are incredibly striking despite their seeming simplicity.

The voice cast of this special is particularly interesting. Of course Jim Backus is on hand to give us that unforgettable Magoo characterization, but also notable are Jack Cassidy as Bob Cratchit and, in a variety of roles each, Morey Amsterdam and Paul Frees. The Oscar winning UPA character Gerald McBoing-Boing, who “spoke” in sound effects throughout his cartoon career, here is “guest starring” as Tiny Tim and is voiced by Joan Gardner.

Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol is obviously the relic of a kinder, gentler age, when a prime time cartoon special was still novel enough it didn’t need a lot of bells, whistles, or visual virtuosity to engage the audience’s interest. That alone may make it too passé for some modern audiences, but if you’re in a nostalgic holiday frame of mind, there’s a lot of heart in this simple little animated feature, heart which perfectly captures the spirit of the Christmas season.

Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Only the quaint, now old-fashioned looking "rocket age" animation circa 1962 dates this incredible AVC encoded 1080p transfer of Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol, in its original broadcast ratio of 1.33:1. This is simply an astounding looking Blu-ray, with lushly beautiful color, exceptional line detail and, most remarkable of all, nary a scratch or blemish to be seen. This is pristine quality that was probably not even experienced by the "opening night" audience of December 18, 1962. The graphical elements of the backgrounds are especially impressive here, and though this is obviously a very two dimensional, flat handdrawn affair, it is swimming in vibrancy and ingenuity, despite its small scale ambitions. Absolutely sharp and clear, obviously defying our hero's famous eye problems, this is Mister Magoo as you've never seen him before.

Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There's nothing intrinsically bad about the lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 repurposed track presented here, other than the limitations of the original recording, which are quite apparent at times. Recorded in a day when televisions had small speakers, with a mono mix still very much the norm, there's only so much a lossless surround track can achieve. While there's no egregious damage here, there is noticeably lacking robustness on both the extreme highs and lows, with an overall compressed sound that simply can't be overcome. There's not a wealth of surround activity here in any case, though the song score is utilized to advantage in this regard, especially in the duets and other group numbers. This is certainly the best this special has ever sounded, make no doubt about it. Just don't expect 2010 level fidelity here.

Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Classic Media has a done a very nice job with this package, enclosing it in a slipcase which comes with a relatively lavish illustrated booklet printed on glossy paper, culled from Darrell Van Citters' encyclopedic book on the making of the special. There's also a DVD copy of the film and a cel autographed by Jim Backus. The Blu-ray itself includes:

• An excellent Commentary by Van Citters, intercut with interview segments the author conducted with several of the cast and crew;
• From Pencil to Paint: Production Montage Slide Show (SD; 3:33), showing how sequences went from outline to finished product, set to the never before heard Overture to the show, an Overture planned for a never released soundtrack album;
• Ringle Ringle Styne and Merrill Demo Track (SD; 2:34), with the composer and lyricist taking the parts of Scrooge and Cratchit;
• Lord's Bright Blessing Storyboard Sequence (SD; 5:12), a picture in picture supplement showing sketches of the sequence, with the finished product in the lower right corner;
• Fezziwig Storyboard Sequence (SD; 3:23), another PIP demonstration.

One quick caveat: several of these extras come with text introductions which whiz by incredibly quickly. I'm a fast reader, and I could not keep up with these introductions. Get ready to press your pause button if you want to read them.

Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol is a lovely, charming and, yes, old fashioned take on Charles Dickens' beloved classic of redemption. This Blu-ray looks absolutely incredible, and sounds better than it ever has. Classic Media has also included a wealth of excellent supplemental material, making this a must have for the holiday season. Very highly recommended.