★★ (2 out of 4)
It’s an event seeing Johnny Depp back on the big screen for a major studio in “Ebenezer,” even if it’s the umpteenth and hardly unforgettable screen version of the Charles Dickens classic, “A Christmas Carol.” He makes a fine feast of the role of Ebenezer Scrooge, the tyrannical tightwad who humbugs holidays with a vengeance. But he won’t get off that easy.
Depp, 63, has been on a redemption tour ever since his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard, helped derail his career with domestic abuse allegations, including slapping, punching, kicking, head-butting and grabbing her by the throat. Depp denied physically or sexually abusing her. No criminal charges stuck. Depp paid Heard a $7 million divorce settlement, separate from their later civil defamation cases against each other. In the UK in 2020, a judge found charges against Depp as a wife beater had been proved under the civil standard. In Virginia in 2022, a jury found Heard liable for defaming Depp, with Heard’s insurer paying $1 million to Depp, who subsequently donated the money to five charities, $200,000 each.
Merry Christmas, everyone. During the main defamation years, from 2018 on, Depp appeared in films as trifling as their titles. Hands please if you saw “Waiting for the Barbarians,” “Minamata,” or “Jeanne du Barry.” Didn’t think so.
Johnny Depp is still the kind of talent who can make you feel a character’s pain. Despite this mess of a movie, I’m rooting for him.
So let’s start a clean slate for the three-time Best Actor Oscar nominee for “The Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Finding Neverland” and “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.” I only wish this high-profile comeback was something better and more bracing than “Ebenezer,” which is also showing its age. I’ve always said Alastair Sim’s Scrooge in 1951’s “A Christmas Carol” is definitive. Depp’s version gives me no reason to rethink.
Though I did have hopes. Depp would be directed by Ti West, the acclaimed horror maestro behind the R rated trilogy of “X” (2022), “Pearl” (2022) and “MaXXXine” (2024), all starring the hotly haunting Mia Goth. Why not make a movie that really brought out the goose-pimpliest elements in the Dickens tale, beginning with those creepy-crawly ghosts played by the ghoulish likes of Ian McKellen, Andrea Riseborough and Tramel Tillman?
What a bummer that “Ebenezer,” despite the Ti West penchant for gore, is rated PG-13, a wussy tag to put on a movie meant to push boundaries. The catch-22 is that you can’t be petrifying when the family audience needs to be placated. Worse, West is working from a script by Nathaniel Halpern that lays on gross sentiment without shame. The sight of Scrooge making hot tea for a homeless man alarmed me in all the wrong ways. West does what he can with ominous lighting and jump scares, but I didn’t jump once and I counted.
Also, “Ebenezer” feels underpopulated and skinflint owned and operated. The reported production of $38 million could barely pay for snack breaks on “The Odyssey.” Even the surefire stuff, like the ills of poor disabled Tiny Tim (Freddie Lee-Grey) and his father, Ebenezer’s much abused clerk Bob Cratchit, don’t amount to much. And Cratchit is played by Rupert Grint, reduced of all the “Harry Potter” energy he once displayed as Ron Weasey. As for the name cast, they’re one and done. Sam Claflin (“The Hunger Games”) and Daisy Ridley (“Star Wars”) play Fred, Scrooge’s cheerful nephew, and his intimidated wife Clara, though you’d hardly notice.
The big show, for what it is, is all Depp. The naysayers claim his tics and mannerisms quickly become insufferable. I say he’s really the only thing worth watching and that includes the underfunded sets and costumes. The few scenes Depp has with McKellen have a creepy comic nastiness this film could use more of. Loved his preening, lisping pronunciation of the words, “Merry Christmas,” like poison on the tongue.
More crucially, Depp finds Ebenezer’s grieving heart, not in the scenes with Belle (Ellie Bamber), the girl who left him behind, but with his younger self, played by Arthur Conti. “He can’t hear you,” hisses Riseborough’s impatient Ghost of Christmas Past as Ebenezer tries to convince the boy not to make the mistakes he’s hurtling toward. Depp is still the kind of talent who can make you feel a character’s pain. Both he and Ebenezer are looking for absolution. Dickens took care of Ebenezer. Depp’s fate is up to the audience. I’m rooting for him.