Box office Scrooge opened on two screens in Los Angeles and Chicago, grossing $36,000 in its opening week. The release expanded two weeks later, including an opening at
Radio City Music Hall in New York City, and moved up to second place at the US box office behind
Lovers and Other Strangers. The following week it became
number one but again fell to second place behind
Lovers and Other Strangers for one week before returning to number one for two weeks before Christmas. In its sixth week at Radio City Music Hall it grossed $375,095 for the week, which
Variety believed to be the biggest ever single week gross for a theatre worldwide surpassing the record set the previous Christmas by
A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Over the course of its initial theatrical release, the film earned $3 million in
distributor rentals in the United States and Canada. It was considered a disappointment financially. Arthur D. Murphy for
Variety called
Scrooge "a most delightful film in every way" and praised Finney as "remarkable". He also complimented Bricusse's "unobtrusive complementary music and lyrics; and Ronald Neame's delicately controlled direction which conveys, but does not force, all the inherent warmth, humor and sentimentality."
Charles Champlin of the
Los Angeles Times applauded
Scrooge as a "lovely movie, one of the few genuinely family-wide attractions of the whole year, calculated to please equally all those who have loved the Dickens work forever, and all those enviable youngsters who are about to discover it for the first time."
Roger Ebert of the
Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, feeling it "works very nicely on its intended level and the kids sitting near me seemed to be having a good time." However, he criticized Bricusse's songs, writing that they "fall so far below the level of good musical comedy that you wish Albert Finney would stop singing them, until you realize he isn't really singing." Reviewing for the
New York Daily News, Ann Guarino wrote
Scrooge was "bright with humor and moves along at a lively pace in 19th Century settings." She further praised the cast as "excellent," but described Bricusse's songs as being "pleasant, but unfortunately forgettable with the exception of 'Thank You Very Much'".
Vincent Canby of
The New York Times called Finney's performance "absurd, sentimental, pretty, never quite as funny as it intends to be, but quite acceptable, if only as a seasonal ritual." Overall, Canby felt the adaptation was "surprisingly faithful", and he complimented Ronald Neame for directing "the movie with all of the delicacy possible after a small story has been turned into a comparatively large, conventional musical. The settings—London streets and interiors, circa 1860 (updated from the original 1843)—are very attractive, somewhat spruced-up variations on the original
John Leech illustrations."
Pauline Kael of
The New Yorker found
Scrooge to be an "innocuous musical version of
A Christmas Carol, starring Albert Finney looking glum. The Leslie Bricusse music is so forgettable that your mind flushes it away while you're hearing it."
Jay Cocks of
Time magazine derided Finney's performance as "drastically disappointing. [He] grumbles and hobbles through his part, employing mannerism instead of nuance." Cocks was also critical of Bricusse's songs, and summarized the film as "a high-budget holiday spectacular, a musical extracted from Dickens'
A Christmas Carol that turns out to be a curdled cup of holiday cheer [...] First frame to last,
Scrooge is a mechanical movie made with indifference to every quality but the box office receipts." Among retrospective reviews,
James Berardinelli of
ReelViews called
Scrooge "a harmless, fitfully enjoyable version of the timeless classic". He felt Finney belonged "somewhere in the middle of the pack with this hammy, albeit enjoyable, portrayal", but nevertheless felt Alec Guinness gave a "standout performance". Derek Winnert noted that the "lame script but thoughtful handling produce an upmarket, good-looking film that impresses without exciting greatly." Author Fred Guida called it one of the most underrated adaptions of the book.
Accolades The film was nominated for Best Original Song Score, and "Thank You Very Much" for Best Original Song, though it failed to win in either category. It also received nominations, but no Oscars, for Best Art Direction/Set Decoration and Best Costume Design. ==Adaptations==