- Catharsis Factor: Charles finally tearing into his father with a magnificent "Reason You Suck" Speech for all his silly antics is very satisfying, especially as it's brought on by his father being found digging through the rubbish for a copy of Charles's signature to sell.
- Fridge Brilliance: Dickens' relationship with his spendthrift father. It's easy to be unlike Scrooge and his extreme miserliness amidst joy and happiness by reasonable folk. In real life, it is harder for Dickens to keep his own chin up when his parents, and even to an extent his sister (who was not separated from them as a child, but does struggle with an ill son), almost embody Scrooge's fictional screed about wasting money and not holding people to account; the mother is practically an enabler, and his sister nearly shrugs it off. Dickens cannot, but ultimately uses this conflict between charity and reality to finish his tale properly.
- Genius Bonus:
- Dickens is shown to be a fan of Arabian Nights and Robinson Crusoe. These books were also enjoyed by Scrooge, a detail many adaptations leave out for brevity's sake.
- Tiny Tim originally being slated to die references that in the manuscript version of the story, his fate wasn't revealed, with his survival presumably added when Dickens went to the publishers'.
- The majority of the cast are played by Shakespearean Actors, which is a nice nod to Dickens being a fan of Shakespeare - having also starred in amateur productions of it himself. In Christmas Carol, Scrooge also compares Marley's ghost to that of Hamlet's father.
- Unintentionally Sympathetic: The film wants us to be appalled by Dickens's treatment of his father, and the characters are quick to criticize him over the matter. But when Charles was a boy, his father was sent to debtors' prison note and Charles was forced to work in a hellhole of a boot blacking factory at the age of twelve, until his father was freed; indeed, he was still working there several months after his father's release. Moreover, Dickens in the time of the film is essentially supporting his parents by giving them a house and an allowance note , only for John to beg for money from his son's publishers and scavenge through the garbage to sell his son's manuscripts and signature. All these things considered, the attempt to paint Charles as the bad guy doesn't really work. If anything, Charles was being extraordinarily generous to a father who refused to take responsibility for his own life, and the son had every right to be frustrated and angry.
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