The movie belongs to the teenage buddies as much as to the title character, and echoes of Mark Twain are neither accidental nor incidental.

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This is why the accidental genius of Charles Dickens is to have made, of Ebenezer Scrooge, the only character in the story who has any personality to him and the one whose stoic attempt at a futile resistance is invoked under the breath more than most people care to admit.

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