"Mickey's Christmas Carol" from 1983 is a reasonably faithful version of the classic story. It features most of the characters and a lot of the incidents from the book.
This is a cartoon through and through, though, and the story really serves as a framework for the gags that come fast and furious. It's not exactly a spoof, but everything is exaggerated. While there are a couple of dramatic moments, this is not "Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol!"
I wouldn't say there are exactly spoilers ahead, as we all know the basic story, but if you haven't seen this cartoon, by all means do so, as I'll be discussing some of the jokes.
After a pretty cool establishing shot of London, Scrooge enters his office. A bit of a running gag is that he keeps having to knock the snow from the sign, as it covers his name, but not Marley's, which is scratched out.
The opening scenes actually get in all of the essential story elements.
Scrooge gives Bob Cratchit a hard time about using coal, but Bob shows Scrooge that his ink is frozen, which gives a good indication of the exaggerated tone.
Scrooge's nephew Fred comes in to invite him to Christmas dinner and two gentlemen come in collecting for charity.
I absolutely love the squelch that Scrooge uses on the charity collectors and I will say no more in case you didn't heed my spoiler warning!
Scrooge goes home and sees Marley's face in the door knocker. This is perhaps the only version in which Scrooge squeezes Marley's nose!
There's some funny business with shadows going up the staircase before Scrooge reaches his chambers. Marley's Ghost comes and manages to warn Scrooge and tell him the other spirits are coming, although he is quite... Goofy!
The Ghost of Christmas Past comes along and he's pretty good at needling Scrooge.
We only have time for a couple of scenes from the past, but they both involve the Belle character, named Isabel here.
The first is Fezziwig's Christmas party. As is so common, she's at the party with young Scrooge. I wonder if there are more adaptations in which Belle (or whatever she may be called) is at the party than ones in which she is not.
Next is the breakup scene. The spirit mentions that this was 10 years later. Always interesting when little details like that are added. A bit of a twist here is that Isabel was still hoping to marry Scrooge until he does something very Scroogey. This is for comedic effect and is funny.
The Ghost of Christmas Present is next up and we get a lot of wackiness from him.
The only scene we get in the present is the Cratchit family's Christmas dinner. Tiny Tim is very sweet and thoughtful. He's the one who says they should thank Mr. Scrooge for the feast.
We don't get the chance to go to Fred's house, so we really don't know much about him, even whether he's married or not.
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come appears next and he and Scrooge are in a graveyard where they see the Cratchits without, of course, Tiny Tim. This is handled extremely sensitively, which is a contrast to the mostly jokey tone of the rest of the show.
Scrooge sees his own grave being dug and is eventually pushed into it by the talking, cigar-smoking spirit!
But he wakes up back in his own bedroom and is ready to change his ways. He runs into Fred and the charity guys when he's on his way to Bob Cratchit's house.
That's another frequent change found in a lot of adaptations - Scrooge going to visit the Cratchits on Christmas Day.
He has a big bag of presents, including the turkey and makes Bob his partner. Happy ending!
So, despite the very wacky cartoony tone, this version actually gets in a lot of the story. I'm not sure if you already need to be familiar with the story to really follow what's happening, but it certainly helps.
It's hard to believe this came out 36 years ago, but I think it really holds up well. The classic cartoon stars are as appealing as ever and the story is timeless!
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