Such an entertaining movie, even in cut form. The deceptively simple character designs give way to animation that is amazingly expressive, and actually witty. I would call the motion and movement witty - a word you would normally only apply to words.
And although Chris doesn't quite believe it, watching it again just confirmed my belief that the Thief's fight with Zigzag at the end, even though it's not in the rough cut, was I think something that Williams did come up with, after the rough cut was bootlegged. The animation is just too good in most of that segment, and it fits in with some of what we do see in the rough cut (Zigzag seems to have been tied up and defeated, even in the rough cut).
What always bugs me about this version is that The Thief's part was cut down heavily for this cut, and many of his scenes put in as "outtakes" during the credits ... and there are several scenes in the credits that ONLY appear there, because they weren't in the rough cut yet when it was bootlegged! Notably an assault on the Buddha ruby by the Thief wearing bouncy feet springs, and a longer version of the Thief stealing the emerald (added in the 90s apparently, to a scene animated in the 60s!) ...
If only I had a version of those scenes without credits over them ... tsk tsk.
I watched Williams' A Christmas Carol, thanks to Chris' DVD. The animation is amazing, some of Williams' studio's best. Especially notable is Scrooge - I couldn't recall when I had ever seen a realistic human character animated with so much believability and personality. You really buy it as animation of real humans. (The fault of the ever-brilliant Ken Harris I suppose, who also did The Thief, and the Pink Panther for Williams.) The casting of Alistair Sim also touched me as a bit of a masterstroke, as his live-action Scrooge was the one my family watched every year.
However, although the film is visually perfect, it doesn't hit the emotional beats that other adaptations of A Christmas Carol have -- since we've seen so many versions of this story, there were many moments where I thought, well, that's been done much better in that other adaptation.
There was very little music (meaning basically none - there's a lot of silence), which would have helped it have more emotional impact, and Alistair Sim's performance, although I think he's in theory the ideal Scrooge, misses the mark at times - he's allowed to be too likeable and eccentric when he should be grumpy, and never hits the depths of despair that he ought - the fault of directing I suppose.
They animated things which weren't relevant to the story (flying around at length with the ghost of Christmas Past, purely to show off the animation), and went quickly over points which have been the emotional high point of other adaptations. The ending particularly so. There's no "God bless us, every one," and the narration has no emotion to it, it's quite poor.
My opinion - an amazing piece of animation, the visuals are perfect. This is a major work, one of Williams' best. I feel that with a little more work on the sound - rerecording the voices, doing music and sound effects - this could have been the best Christmas Carol ever. As it stands, it is merely great. Recommended.