A Flintstones' Christmas Carol (1994) - Part 1

A Flintstones' Christmas Carol (1994)
Director: Joanna Romersa
Scrooge: Fred Flintstone

While we're looking at adaptations of "A Christmas Carol" featuring established characters, we visit Bedrock for "A Flintstones' Christmas Carol," a made-for-TV movie-length special from 1994.

Naturally I'm a fan of the original "The Flintstones" TV series, but I think the later incarnations are hit or miss.

I do like this one, however. It's a lot of fun, but also takes the original story seriously, which is always a good thing.

The premise of this movie is that the Bedrock Community Players are putting on their stage version of "A Christmas Carol" with Fred Flintstone as Scrooge. Fred lets the stardom go to his head and needs to be reminded what's really important.

Within this framing story we are treated to the entire show, which is a pretty faithful adaptation with a bit of Flintstonization.

A couple of things do need to be overlooked, if you will, to enjoy the show and go along for the ride.

First is how are they celebrating Christmas? This takes place B.C. so that by definition there shouldn't be Christmas in that world.

A scene from the "Christmas Flintstone" episode.

But the Flintstones franchise has long embraced the holiday, going back to the "Christmas Flintstone" episode from the original series in 1964

The second is that there are special effects and sets within the play that couldn't possibly be done on stage, let alone on the relatively small stage we see in a couple of establishing shots and within the budget of a local community theater production.

But, such is the case with "Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol" among many other TV shows and movies as well.

And, after all, this is a cartoon about cave people that have talking animals as household appliances, so don't come here looking for realism!

Next we look at how the other Bedrock denizens are cast in support of Fred's Scrooge.