Christmas film

MOVIE: The Man Who Invented Christmas

STARRING: Dan Stevens, Christopher Plummer, Jonathan Pryce, Morfydd Clark RATING: PG

THE Man Who Invented Christmas is a pleasant enough, if slightly disjointed Christmas film, following a string of hard historical fact with fanciful detours into fiction.

That is the relatively satisfactory outcome for The Man Who Invented Christmas, a literary docu-fantasy capturing the birth of one of the greatest Yuletide tales ever put down on paper.

In the grotty old London of 1843, legendary British author Charles Dickens (played by Dan Stevens) is enduring a career-worst slump.

Against all advice — not to mention the prevailing publishing trends of the Victorian era — Dickens decides his next work will be as old-fashioned a yarn as can be.

The end result, of course, will be one of Dickens’ greatest works, A Christmas Carol. However, to complete it will require a new focus and fresh perspective that could be beyond the reach of the author.

With the most vivid elements of the film locked away inside Dickens’ head, The Man Who Invented Christmas does a good job of freeing these wonderful ideas on a regular basis.

One great example is the occasional imagined sighting of Christopher Plummer, playing a twisted, mocking vision that comes to Dickens at the worst possible junctures.