Johnny Depp's Scrooge in 'Ebenezer': A Comeback Dressed as a Ghost Story

Johnny Depp plays Ebenezer Scrooge in "Ebenezer," Ti West's new adaptation of "A Christmas Carol," and the film's real suspense is not Dickens but the Depp comeback. The review in the source puts the central verdict bluntly: at his worst, Depp appears as if he is "in a Scrooge costume in a Christmas-season ad campaign for Verizon. At his best, he is competent."

The film runs 1 hour 56 minutes, carries a PG-13 rating for frightening material, and is now in theaters. Its genre billing spans adventure, comedy, drama, fantasy and thriller. Among the many screen iterations of the Dickens tale, this one toggles, according to the review, "mostly between dual modes of the perfunctory and the inoffensive" — "bland in imagination and supremely straightforward in interpretation."

What does the film actually deliver?

The plot follows the structure every audience has known since elementary school. The greedy miser Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his colleague Jacob Marley, then by three more apparitions on Christmas Eve, each haunting him out of his avarice and into the holiday spirit. The film injects little beyond some studio scale. Its supporting cast — Ian McKellen, Tramell Tillman and Daisy Ridley — gets little room to play.

This is the Ebenezer show, which is to say the film orbiting around Depp. He relies mostly on "an exaggerated scowl and a spunky grouchiness" to steer an adaptation single-mindedly focused on four-quadrant holiday levity and predictability.

The film also carries corporate symbolism. It may be the first post-merger Paramount project to feature the Skydance name in its title card — a possible telling symbol, or omen, of the studio's future direction.

Is Depp really playing Scrooge?

The review argues no. Seeing Depp, on billboards as much as on screen, "induces déjà vu, which just might be the point." He is not creating an interpretation of, or even really playing, Ebenezer Scrooge. Fundamentally, the review says, this is a ploy to put Depp in a get-up again — one whose general figure and humbug coziness audiences have stored in the recesses of their childhood minds.

Whether consciously or out of a lack of creativity, the aging star plays an agreeable version of himself, aimed at providing a fond reminder of the Depp-in-drag iconography he crafted over the last few decades. It is an attempt to play the hits within a single role.

What does this change for Depp's career?

The review frames "Ebenezer" as more corrective magic act than pure comeback. In the ignominy of Depp's last few years, it is easy to forget that he did not tumble from the top as a result of a courtroom battle; his acting career had already hardened into a shtick long before. The film implicitly markets itself on "the empirically shaky idea of a beloved Depp that was taken away."

The source closes with the sharpest cut of all: "If you don't squint too hard, his Scrooge might not only function as a return, but a memory wipe."

Time will tell whether the box office — and therefore the studios and the public — has reaccepted Depp. But artistically, the review concludes, this is the mini-comeback before the comeback, and a low-stakes, foolproof-branded IP choice for a star whose career has been almost singularly associated with gothic and garish personae.