Scrooged (1988)

I'm sure it's safe to say that A Christmas Carol is one of the most popular Christmas stories ever told. First published in 1863, the novella by Charles Dickens has become one of the most enduring pieces of holiday literature ever conceived. It has been adapted for the stage, film, television, radio, and the opera countless times, dating as far back as 1910. There have been versions of the story that starred the Muppets, Mickey Mouse, the Jetsons, and Mr. Magoo, while some people have even taken to doing their own sequels and prequels to the story.

And of course, there have been numerous parodies, retellings, and modernized versions over the years, along with attempts to transplant the story onto other holidays (with varying degrees of success). One of the more wacky retellings of the story, though, is the 1988 comedy Scrooged. With the incomparable Bill Murray as the movie's answer to Ebenezer Scrooge, Scrooged received a lukewarm reception from critics and performed modestly at the box office. But I will confess that I'm a fan of the movie, and I'll tell you why.

Frank Cross (Murray) is quite possibly the most ruthless businessman alive. The self-centered, cynical president of a popular television network, Frank can and will do just about anything to make sure things go his way. He overworks his secretary, Grace (Alfre Woodard), so much that she rarely gets to spend any substantial quality time with her children. He keeps his brother James (John Murray) at arm's length, and picked his career over the love of his life, Claire (Karen Allen).

With Christmas on the way, Frank has invested forty million dollars into his network's upcoming live production of A Christmas Carol. He's hired an all-star cast — including Buddy Hackett as Ebenezer Scrooge, Jamie Farr as Jacob Marley, Mary Lou Retton as Tiny Tim, and the Solid Gold Dancers as themselves — and dumps the intended family-friendly advertising campaign in favor of a commercial full of imagery so horrifying that it literally scares an old lady to death. And just because he can, Frank fires a staff member (Bobcat Goldthwait) for daring to criticize the new commercial.

But Frank's life soon begins to oddly mirror the show his network is producing. One night, he's visited by the ghost of his old boss and mentor, Lew Hayward (John Forsythe). Of course, Frank is disbelieving. Lew's been dead for years, so he shouldn't be up walking around. But he's very real, and he tells Frank that he'll be visited by three ghosts that will show him the error of his ways.

Though Frank initially shrugs it off as a stress-induced hallucination, the ghosts eventually make their presence known. First is the Ghost of Christmas Past (David Johansen), a surly cab driver with a sarcastic sense of humor. Next is the Ghost of Christmas Present (Carol Kane), a maniacal pixie with a penchant for violence. And last but not least is the Ghost of Christmas Future, a seven-foot-tall Grim Reaper lookalike with a TV for a face. Anyone even remotely familiar with A Christmas Carol know how things will turn out, but all the fun is in getting there.

There are so many versions of A Christmas Carol to choose from, but Scrooged has always been one of my favorites. Though it feels a bit more mean-spirited than most, its dark humor sets it apart from the rest and actually makes it more entertaining. There are parts of Scrooged that would probably freak out more impressionable viewers, but then some of these moments are so absurd that you can't help but laugh at them. These shifts in tone may be off-putting for some, but for me, the whole thing works.

In the director's chair is Richard Donner, who was on a heck of a roll at this point in his career. He'd just come off Lethal Weapon a year prior, and he'd directed movies like The Omen, Superman, The Toy, and The Goonies in the decade that preceded it. And although Scrooged wasn't the huge box office smash hit it could have been, I thought it kept Donner's roll going.

Donner does a fantastic job in establishing just how lonely Frank's life is. Frank's office is cold and depressing, and practically all of Bill Murray's scenes are filmed in a way that replicates that. Donner films Murray's scenes in blacks, whites, and grays in order to put us in Frank's drab world, while every other character — the ones who are actually happy and willing to celebrate Christmas — are filmed with a bright, warm, cheery atmosphere. The dichotomy is both deceptive and obvious, and Donner puts it together flawlessly.

Handling the writing duties are Mitch Glazer and Michael O'Donougue, who are in the less than enviable position of adapting a story that has been told a million times in a million different ways. Everybody knows the plot of A Christmas Carol by now, so updating it for the modern day (well, updating it for 1988) could have been tough. But I felt that Glazer and O'Donougue managed to pull it off.

There's plenty of laughs and some heartwarming moments, but their spin on the classic tale is darker than one would expect. Some of the jokes are a bit racy, and the whole segment with the Ghost of Christmas Future will probably frighten little kids. So yeah, Glazer and O'Donougue really go for it with the PG-13 rating. But that's okay, because they still contribute a decent enough script.

And last up to bat is the movie's strongest element, its cast. Naturally, most of the focus will be on Bill Murray as our updated Ebenezer Scrooge. The movie basically revolves around Murray, as you'd naturally expect the story to, and he manages to hold things up on his end. Though there's times when the character is supposed to be the meanest prick you've ever seen, Murray is just so engaging that you can't completely hate him. He's playing a snake for pretty much the whole movie, but because it's Bill freaking Murray, he's a likable snake.

But the thing is, as good as Murray is, he gets the movie stolen out from under him by pretty much the entire supporting cast. I have nothing but good things to say about them. In the role of the token love interest, Karen Allen plays such a sweetheart that it actually made me a bit sad when Frank chose some kids' show over her character in the "Christmas Past" segment. Allen is flat-out adorable in pretty much every scene she's in, and I have to give a thumbs up to the casting director for hiring her. I also liked Alfre Woodard as Scrooged's version of Bob Cratchit. Though it felt like she didn't have much screen time, she was effective and got the job done.

But my favorite performances of the movie came from the final three actors I'll mention. One comes from Bobcat Goldthwait, who plays a character who's gone into an alcohol-fueled psychosis after losing his job on Christmas Eve. Towards the end of the movie, he storms into Frank's office with a double-barreled shotgun with revenge on his mind, and Goldthwait's performance is so insanely over the top that it's hilarious.

My other two favorite performances come from the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, as played by David Johansen (who is perhaps more famous as either the singer of the punk band the New York Dolls, or for his 1987 hit song "Hot Hot Hot" under his pseudonym "Buster Poindexter") and Carol Kane. Both of them are a heck of a lot of fun and are great in the roles, though Kane's "abusive pixie" shtick starts to get old after a while.

Scrooged is not without its faults, however. One is that I'd have liked to have seen more of the fake Christmas specials that the network was running. We get a little taste, with advertisements for "Robert Goulet's Cajun Christmas" and "The Night the Reindeer Died" running near the beginning of the movie. "The Night the Reindeer Died" is especially awesome, with Lee Majors appearing as a commando who protects Santa Claus from ninjas with machine guns. I know this isn't UHF, but I could have handled a few more scenes like that.

Okay, so that was more of a general complaint than an actual fault. The only real problem with Scrooged is that it just doesn't know when to end. Pretty much everybody knows that Scrooge has a change of heart at the end of A Christmas Carol, right? When this happens to Frank, he interrupts that much-lauded live broadcast and goes on a long, rambling monologue about how awesome Christmas is. This goes on for several minutes, and by the end, he gathers pretty much everyone he can and leads them all in a song that's way too long. It just keeps going and going, to the point that you start wondering if this will ever be wrapped up.

And even when the closing credits start rolling, it keeps going. Murray even breaks the fourth wall and encourages the viewers to sing along too. It's like Donner just left the camera rolling and didn't call "cut" until he ran out of film. The movie was doing so fine until then, but the last thirteen or so minutes of the movie could almost cause you to think less of what came before.

I will confess that Scrooged probably isn't the best adaptation of A Christmas Carol. And even as a standalone movie, one could conceivably make the argument that it's adequate at best. But I actually enjoyed it. It's not one of those Christmas movies I can sit down and watch numerous times every December, but it's still entertaining enough to get repeat viewings from yours truly.

The movie's irreverent retelling of a classic story won't appeal to everyone, as I said, but it's definitely worth a watch if it sounds up your alley. So I'm going to give Scrooged three stars and a "thumbs up." I just wonder, though, what Charles Dickens himself would think of this movie. Hmm...

Final Rating: ***