Miserly Ebenezer Scrooge (Scrooge McDuck, voice: Alan Young), ignores Christmas and his fellow “man,” has nothing to do with his nephew, Fred (Donald Duck, voice: Clarence Nash), and makes life difficult for his employee, Bob Cratchit (Mickey Mouse, voice: Wayne Allwine). The ghost of his partner (Goofy, voice: Hal Smith) appears to him at night to inform him that he will be visited by three spirits: The Ghost of Christmas Past (Jiminy Cricket, voice: Eddy Carroll), The Ghost of Christmas Present (Willie the Giant, voice: Will Ryan), and The Ghost of Christmas Future (Pete, voice: Will Ryan) (voice). 25 min.
There’s no surprises in this by-the-book animated rendition of A Christmas Carol, but what it lacks in originality, it makes up in beautiful drawings and first class voice work. The tale has been simplified and told with the help of Disney’s stable of characters, which should be enough to make it loved by small children and acceptable to the whole family. An extra twenty minutes would have helped it as the ghosts hardly have time to show Scrooge a scene from his life, much less enough to make him change his ways. But, this bare bones approach covers the basics.
After an absence of thirty year, Mickey’s Christmas Carol was the return of Mickey Mouse to the screen, though he isn’t the star, even if his name is in the title. It should have been Scrooge McDuck’s Christmas Carol, but putting Scrooge’s name before the title would have been overkill. Even with a small part, Mickey makes a fine return.
Mickey’s Christmas Carol is too respectful of the material for its own good. I’d like to have seen a few more witticisms and additional gags based on the Disney characters. There are a few. Willie the Giant searches by lifting the roofs of houses in one of the film’s better moments. And Jiminy Cricket is his normal preachy self. But the script prefers Dickens’ art to Disney’s.