Today, when we think of Charles Dickens, we usually think of A Christmas Carol, a marvelous story of which various dramatic variants are shoved in our faces around Christmastime almost as nauseatingly often as It’s a Wonderful Life. The one with Alistair Sim is perhaps the most enjoyable; but I could happily live the rest of my life without ever again seeing Bill Murray’s lightweight Scrooged.

We may occasionally think of a couple of his other works — The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist come to mind. Nicholas Nickleby would rarely be remembered; but, in fact, it’s one of his more enjoyable novels. I first encountered it in Denmark, where the high-school English class I attended (whose members were rarely able to synthesize a comprehensible sentence) were being force-fed the book, perhaps a chapter a week. I read the whole thing when I went through a Dickens phase in college, and enjoyed it enough that I reread all 800+ pages again a decade ago, even though it hardly qualifies as science-fiction or fantasy …

For those who don’t know the story, it’s a semi-picaresque novel about the adventures of the scion of a down-on-its-luck Victorian family (papa died of a broken heart after misguidedly speculating in a bear market; the creditors have eaten up the family’s possessions) who is attempting to make his own way in the world while at the same time rescuing his sister Kate (Romola Garai) from the clutches of an evil uncle — the very model of a 19th century cutthroat capitalist — who would make Ken Lay look like Mother Teresa. Nicholas first accepts a job as an assistant at a Yorkshire boarding school, from which he rescues the unfortunate and ill-fated cripple Smike, he of the unknown (though guessable) antecedents; and from that point on he travels from episode to episode until finally, with the help of those whom his uncle has victimized over the years (most notably the slightly mad Newman Noggs), he Reveals All and sets forth into a Happy Future, while his uncle Gets His Comeuppance.

Some of the actors are inspired, particularly the villains of the piece — Christopher Plummer as Ralph Nickleby, Jim Broadbent (with lots of makeup on his left eye!) as the vile Yorkshire schoolmaster Wackford Squeers. I had always imagined the importunate Sir Mulberry Hawk as having mustachios, which he twirled between his fingers, but the smooth- but craggy-faced Edward Fox does the part well without them. Charlie Hunnam struck me as being just a bit old for Nicholas, though the age difference between actor and character is actually only a couple of years. I also don’t remember Mrs. Squeers (Juliet Stevenson) being as much of a prime mover in the vileness at Dotheboys Hall as she was in the film, but that may simply have been a Victorian reluctance on Dickens’ part to have a woman as a major villain (as opposed to a mere supporting villain), one that the makers of the film, being modern men (and women), would have no problem overcoming.

Underused, in my humble opinion, are the love of Nicholas’s young life Madeline Bray (Anne Hathaway), his self-imagined fiancee Fannie Squeers (Heather Goldenhersh) and the swayable landlady Miss LaCreevy (Sophie Thompson). Also, perhaps, the Brothers Ned and Charles Cheeryble (who, according to Dickens, really existed, though under another name). While it would have been impossible to get everything in the book into a two-hour movie, I really think they could have devoted another five minutes to the breaking up of Dotheboys Hall; the film, unlike Dickens, leaves us hanging as to what the fate of that sinister institution would be, unsure that more generations of young boys would not be dumped there to suffer fates similar to that of Smike.

There have been at least four movie versions of the story (the first in 1903, only three decades after Dickens’ death!), as well as a miniseries a couple of decades ago. The last full movie version, done in 1947, was in black-and-white; it is not clear how much color adds to a story which takes place in an essentially black-and-white environment (19th-century London, Dotheboys Hall in Yorkshire).

Well worth seeing, I think.