Rich Little's Christmas Carol

 Are you down? Are you having trouble "getting into the 'Christmas spirit'" this year? Feeling boxed in by it all? Well, I know how to fix things. How about a version of "A Christmas Carol" where every character is played by Rich Little doing an impression of a different celebrity?

Yes, this production has it all... Rich Little as W.C. Fields as Scrooge, Rich Little as Richard Nixon as Jacob Marley, Rich Little as Groucho Marx as Fezziwig, Rich Little as Truman Capote as Tiny Tim and it just goes on and on from there. Are you a millennial? If so, you have no idea who any of these people are, do you? I guarantee you have never even heard the name Paul Lynde before.

Yes, this special is real and it's incredible (impossible to believe).

My top complaint about this production is that "A Christmas Carol" is, or can be, such an emotionally powerful story...it feels like such a waste for this kind of... whatever it is. If you want a comical parody of a story that everyone knows, do "The Wizard of Oz", Robin Hood, do Rudolph do... hold on... There was a Dana Carvey Show sketch where Dana Carvey was Rich Little in "All Rich Little One Man Easter"... Dana Carvey played Rich Little playing various celebrities playing various Biblical characters... that sketch makes complete sense now.

But anyways, I don't see the point in taking a powerful story and extracting all the heart from it so you can deliver the empty husk of a classic. Take out all the emotion and you're only left with an "I know what that is" skeleton. Just look at every "punk" cover of every popular song ever recorded.

The strangest thing to me about this special is the impetus for Scrooge/Fields to change. Instead of seeing that Tiny Tim dies prematurely, the ghost of Christmas Future (Rich Little as Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau) shows him Scrooge's grave and only his. So, in this version, Scrooge needs to change his ways in order to not die? I got news for you, that's not negotiable. It's also not very dramatic or powerful. Now, to be fair, Scrooge/W.C. Fields is an alcoholic and so it's implied that he's going to die of alcoholism unless he quits but this message is not given any of the weight that it deserves; and besides, what has that got to do with Christmas? Why would quitting alcohol equate to giving Cratchet a raise or celebrating Christmas with your nephew? The first thing that happens at the Christmas party is he's offered a drink and he drinks it and makes a funny face. The only connection I see between alcoholism and "A Christmas Carol" is that the first thing he does after going "cold turkey" is to buy a giant turkey. I'll see myself out. God bless us, everyone.