Cinema: Curdled Cheer

Scrooge is a high-budget holiday spectacular, a musical extracted from Dickens' A Christmas Carol that turns out to be a curdled cup of holiday cheer. It is hard to imagine how men of supposed good will and talent could invest their time, their money and their skill in such a spectacularly shoddy enterprise. First frame to last, Scrooge is a mechanical movie made with indifference to every quality but the box office receipts.

Scrooge boasts Albert Finney in the title role of the flinty miser who learns the true meaning both of Christmas and...