Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
In 1843, despite the fact that Dickens is a successful writer, the failure of his latest book puts his career at a crossroads, until the moment when, struggling with inspiration and confronting reality with his childhood memories, a new character is born in the depths of his troubled mind; an old, lonely, embittered man, so vivid, so human, that a whole world grows around him, a story so inspiring that changed the meaning of Christmas forever.
The Man Who Invented Christmas is a charming and competent dramatization of how Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, with Dan Stevens and Christopher Plummer delivering solid performances. The conceit of Dickens interacting with his fictional characters as they come to life is inventive enough to lift it above routine biopic territory, but the film never fully escapes the limitations of the prestige-lite family drama format. The plot is serviceable but predictable, following a fairly well-worn creative-struggle narrative arc. Cinematography is pleasantly period-appropriate without being visually distinguished. The ending resolves neatly but without much emotional punch, feeling somewhat rushed and overly tidy given the weight of the material. Novelty gets a modest bump for the meta-fictional device of Dickens conversing with Scrooge and other characters, which is the film's most distinctive creative choice, though it's not executed with enough boldness to make it truly memorable.