My Review of Scrooged (1988)

 

Written by Mitch Glazer And Michael O'Donoghue

Directed by Richard Donner

James (re Frank): "My brother, the King of Christmas."

It's Christmas Eve so one more movie based on A Christmas Carol should be fine to review and why not this one, yeah? It's been a long time since I've watched this one and I thought today would be a good day to talk about it.

Anyways this is a contemporary take on the Charles Dickens classic with Bill Murray playing the Scrooge of the piece. He's a mean spirited television executive named Frank Cross who has his employees either terrified or exhausted by him.

Because of this, it's not long before Frank gets a visit from three different ghosts while at the same time having to deal with his boss Preston Rhinelander (Robert Mitchum) and the somewhat annoying Brice Cummings (John Glover). The latter being there to assist with a broadcast version of A Christmas Carol, funnily enough.

Getting to the ghosts of the piece, we had the Ghost of Christmas Past being a smart mouth taxi driver (David Johansen) going through Frank's past as a child as well as his ex-girlfriend, Claire Phillips (Karan Allen) with the latter clearly being the one that got away from Frank. Claire's selflessness being a not subtle contrast to Frank as well.

Then there was the Ghost of Christmas Present, a manic violent fairy played with aplomb by Carol Kane. I enjoyed her the most as she showed Frank how crap he put his assistant Grace (Alfre Woodard) through. Frank also saw the happier life of his brother, James (John Murray) to boot.

Then there's a scary Grin Reaper for the last bit, the possibility of death and boom, Frank amended his ways and rehired poor Eliot (Bobcat Goldthwait) before going on a massive apology tour. I mean, it is  A Christmas Carol so it's par for the course really.

- All of Bill Murray's brothers appeared in this movie and Lee Majors even did a spoof of The Six Million Dollar Man at the start of the movie.

- Bill Murray turned down several roles to do this movie and even then, it took persuading to get him on board. He also add libbed a lot.

- Standout music: Bill Murray's Put A Little Love In Your Heart. 

- Chronology: 1988 New York, where the majority of the movie was filmed.

Scrooged would definitely be up there as one of the best variations of A Christmas Carol. It's got a great lead performance from Bill Murray, strong supporting roles and has a lot of fun playing around with the source material. It's a lot of fun to watch during Christmas.

Rating: 8 out of 10