Ebenezer review: Merry Christmas, Johnny Depp! Is this your comeback yet?

Résumé détaillé

Ebenezer, the latest remake of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, isn't terrible. It's also not particularly interesting.

You're Johnny Depp. Your career — which rests almost entirely on the good will and affection that bubbles to the surface when people hear your name, or at least Captain Jack Sparrow's — is largely in tatters.

A very messy, very public series of allegations of on-set assault (including over a lawsuit you settled) and domestic abuse (which you've denied), along with news-dominating defamation cases, have cumulatively tarnished your golden-goose reputation. Your last big franchise role, as Gellert Grindelwald in Harry Potter's Fantastic Beasts spinoff, ended when Warner Bros. asked you to resign after losing your libel lawsuit with the Sun newspaper for calling you a "wife beater."

You've had few major appearances since. Meanwhile, decades of borderline unbelievable spending sprees saw you acquire a private island and an actual French village (along with nearly enough wine to inebriate the rest of the country) and take on debt rivalling that of some of the world's more spendthrift small nations.

Huh, odd. For your first major Hollywood film since concluding your defamation lawsuit against former partner Amber Heard (a trial you largely won, with Heard ordered to give you $10 million US over her abuse allegations), you've chosen Ebenezer. A beloved if already endlessly rehashed story. To some, this might read as more of a PR campaign than an actually entertaining movie.

On second thought, maybe remaking Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol makes a sort of sense. The tale of our titular, miserly Scrooge learning to love Christmas and his fellow man via visitations from one ghost and three spirits is set in Victorian-era England, after all. You once again get to stumble through London streets covered in grime and soot, speaking in the convincing-to-North Americans, upsetting-to-Brits accent you've cultivated throughout your career.

But as you swagger under meticulously threadbare cloaks and period-specific silly hats, it might be hard for audiences to keep the positive…

This…

Hon…

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