Ebenezer Review: Johnny Depp Literally Pisses on the Charles Dickens Classic

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is one of the most famous books ever written, and amongst its charms is the fact that it’s a holiday tale that’s also a ghost story. It’s an essential part of its power, bringing a dark edge to its fundamental message of rejecting greed in the name of love for one’s fellow man. Unfortunately, Johnny Depp has pissed all over it in the new adaptation Ebenezer — in one scene, quite literally.

The marketing around Ebenezer seemed to hint that this take on the story would be innovative or unique in some special way. It isn’t. Director Ti West’s biggest innovation here is infusing a touch more horror into the spookier parts of the story, the ghosts doing their best to really haunt Scrooge. There’s visual flair to the execution at some points, and it’s always gratifying to see some practical effects in the mix. But any modicum of tension West might have managed to bring to scenes like the first arrival of Marley’s ghost gets undercut by the rest of the story’s fealty to the original story. The end result is like garnishing a fruitcake with pickled onions.

(One of those inedible fruitcakes. The really dry ones.)

One of the taglines used to promote Ebenezer is “Before he was Scrooge he was…”, which would imply that the movie is a prequel. Which is dumb on a few levels, considering that the story has always been a bit of a prequel, covering the whole life of Ebenezer Scrooge leading up to the fateful, life-changing Christmas Eve. Also, um, the name Scrooge isn’t a title like “President” or “Sith Lord.” He was Ebenezer Scrooge all at once when he was born, because that’s how names work.

However, the tagline does serve as a nod to the way that Nathaniel Halpern’s script expands a little bit on two characters not always heavily featured in Christmas Carol adaptations: Ebenezer’s sister Fan and Belle, the fiancée who left Scrooge when they were both young. As in the book, Fan exists primarily to offer Ebenezer a taste of familial kindness and eventually give birth to Ebenezer’s nephew Fred (Sam Claflin). Belle (Ellie Bamber), meanwhile, is revealed to be a fledgling writer who knew her passion for stories would never be compatible with Ebenezer’s passion for money, leading to the end of their relationship.

This is the first Christmas Carol adaptation I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a ton of them) that has given Belle this level of interior life. But in the execution, it’s a hat on a hat — the reason Belle doesn’t usually get this kind of focus is that the narrative simply does not need it. (To the movie’s credit, it doesn’t try to force a second-chance romance into the third act. That would have been truly garbage.)

The marketing for Ebenezer also seemed to imply that this would be a more irreverent take on the source material, which is a pretty funny claim to make about a movie that utilizes full passages of the original text. In fact, the movie is so faithful to Dickens’ prose that it includes the novella’s chapter headings to mark the end of one part and the beginning of another: “Stave I: Marley’s Ghost,” “Stave II: The First Of The Three Spirits” and so on.

Considering that, it’s kind of hilarious that Ebenezer doesn’t specify that it was “adapted from the novella by Charles Dickens” until the very very end of the credits. A bold move, considering the multiple scenes of dialogue copied and pasted so faithfully from the book that any mildly savvy audience member can recite along. The biggest downside to using some of Dickens’ classic exchanges, though, is that the newly written scenes stand out for their failure to match that centuries-old wit.

Not every actor is numbly spouting the same familiar lines, though — at least not in the same familiar way. Andrea Riseborough and Tramell Tillman are certainly doing something as the ghosts of Christmas Past and Present. They’re both fairly one-note performances, but in Riseborough’s case, she’s leaning hard into the concept of Christmas Past as a haunting presence (with opaque contact lenses doing a lot of the heavy lifting for her), which at least fits with West’s horror instincts.

Tillman, meanwhile, lacks the wildly mercurial energy often associated with Christmas Present. Mostly, he seems angry to be saddled with the task of explaining to Ebenezer why humanity’s worth caring about (relatable, to be honest). He’s not as heavily burdened by prosthetics as Riseborough, which is to say he can at least move his face and blink his eyes even as he ages over the course of this one day on Earth.

Other cast members, such as Ian McKellen and Sam Claflin, earn their paychecks honestly enough. But Daisy Ridley’s two-scene performance as Scrooge’s niece Clara isn’t the main attraction here: It’s Johnny Depp’s prosthetics-enhanced return to movie stardom — or at least that’s what Paramount is hoping. Too bad Depp’s performance is a sad joke compared to, say, the great Michael Caine’s definitive take on the role; Caine was performing opposite Muppets, but Depp’s doing his best to act like one.

Depp’s Scrooge is cartoonish and over-the-top mugging from beginning to end. The best thing you can say about it is that it isn’t vain. This approach might have succeeded in a different interpretation of the material, but here clashes mightily with West’s darker instincts: I love when filmmakers blend horror and comedy, but it’s only successful when everyone’s on the same page. Instead, something scary happens in Ebenezer, followed by Ebenezer pissing himself in terror. That’s the joke, I guess.

Perhaps the biggest failing of Depp’s performance is that yes, the innate danger found in his star persona (the same twinkle that made Captain Jack Sparrow into an icon) remains present. When combined with the prosthetics, his take on Ebenezer in his curmudgeon era is a very easy layup. However, he utterly fails at capturing Ebenezer’s transition towards kindness; it’s just the same performance, with a bit more goofiness in the mix.

In fact, by the point in the movie where we’re supposed to believe that the power of Christmas has transformed Ebenezer into a better man, I had almost forgotten that this was a Christmas story. That’s how beaten down I’d gotten by the overt grimness of this take, packed with bummer moments from beginning to end. When recounting Tiny Tim’s hope that people at church might remember “who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see,” Bob Cratchit (Rupert Grint) growls the story like a bitter divorcee testifying at AA. And a new addition to the story: Scrooge’s jovial old boss Fezziwig (Ian Midlane) gets stabbed to death on the street, a victim of his own generosity. Happy fucking holidays!

If you do want a more edgy reinvention of A Christmas Carol, FX has you covered with writer Steven Knight’s exceptionally grim miniseries, starring Guy Pearce and streaming now on Hulu. It’s even longer than Ebenezer (which itself plods by at 116 minutes) but at least uses that runtime to take some wild-ass swings, like Stephen Graham’s Marley getting to meet up with the forger of chains in the spirit world. The FX miniseries is nuts, but it at least knows what story it’s telling.

Then there’s the meta angle, as Depp has chosen one of literature’s most famous redemption tales for his carefully orchestrated comeback. After a brutal legal battle against Amber Heard, which involved credible allegations of domestic abuse, Depp fell off the A-list (a fall enabled by his own poor on-set behavior). After winning that court battle, and quietly laying the path for his return to stardom, does Depp have a special appreciation for second chances, for redemption? If he does, it’s nowhere to be found on the screen, as if he hadn’t thought at all about what it takes for a person to change.

A Christmas Carol is about a man facing his past mistakes and resolving to do better in the future — that’s the scary bit, not the ghosts showing up. Without sincerely embracing that idea, the message that even the most irredeemable soul might be saved is lost. Thankfully, the core tale has lasted this long and will endure even longer. Well past the memory of this mess.

Ebenezer arrives in theaters on Friday, November 13th.