Scrooged 1988

[3.8/10] I’ve often felt like X-mas movies get a little bump when it comes to public appreciation. Something about the holiday season makes us a little more likely to open ourselves up to sap, to give leeway to the silly or ridiculous, to accept blatant heartstring tugging, because it feels right for this time of year. It helps that we see most of these movies for the first time when we’re kids, letting the eggnog-soaked messages burrow into our brains and give us a soft spot for their schmaltzy pleasures when we’re adults.

But maybe there’s an equal and opposite bump for the “edgy” Christmas movie, the type of film that uses a yuletide setting, and may even end on a note of “good will toward men,” but which is darker, more off kilter, and less explicitly mirthful or family-friendly than the standard Hallmark channel fare. Films like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Bad Santa are enjoyable, quality films in and of themselves, but maybe they’re all the more dear to us, all the more venerated, because in a season of tinsel-tinged warmth, mirth, and feel-goodery, they offer X-Mas tales better suited for misfits and cynics than for greeting card-ready happy families.

That’s the only explanation I can come up with for why Scrooged, a warmed over, wackadoodle, sweaty-as-hell retelling of A Christmas Carol, has somehow managed to become a classic despite its general cruddiness. I wanted to like Scrooged. I really did. Everything from the fact that it’s a T.V. satire, to its metatextual winks, to the presence of the legendary Bill Murray makes it seem tailor-made for yours truly. Instead, I found the film to be an utter slog, with each new twist and development more disappointing than the last.

Let’s start with the film’s tepid transformation for its main character, Frank Cross (Murray), a heartless T.V. executive who would step over his own grandmother if it added an extra zero to his bank account. The film fails because Cross, past and present never stops being a cartoon character. There’s no recognizably human element to the character. He’s just a collection of bad guy executive clichés, who doesn't gradually change as he inevitably meets the three spirits there to tell him to mend his ways, but who, instead, acts pretty much the same until the last act when he suddenly and miraculously (and unearned-ly) becomes a change man.

That owes much, I’m sorry to say, to Murray’s performance. The master of taking sardonic shitheels and making them feel recognizable and funny fails miserably at doing either here, but at least can’t be said to be phoning it in. Instead, he overacts like his life depends on it, screeching and mugging and having every response and reaction turned up to eleven. Some of that owes to the excerable script, which already writes Frank Cross as a one-dimensional cartoon, but Murray does nothing to elevate the material. He simply plays into all of his worst, most over the top impulses as an actor, giving a shoulder-shaking performance that robs his character of any inner life and the film of any punch.

That might be excusable, but for the fact that just five years later, Harold Ramis would write the book on how to turn Murray from a cartoonish prick into a sympathetic, changed man, with a winter setting and an assist from the supernatural no less, in Groundhog Day. Unlike audiences in 1988, we know what Scrooged was trying to do with Murray can not only be done, but can be done extraordinarily well, and it puts into relief the way Richard Donner’s abortive attempt at the same sort of thing fails completely.

It fails as a Murray vehicle. It fails as a metatextual update of Dickens’s classic. It fails as a commentary on the state of television. And above all else, it fails at being an entertaining way to spend two hours of your life.

That is, honestly, Scrooged biggest fault. I could tolerate its inexplicably weak storytelling (it’s not like there aren’t enough blueprints for how to do A Christmas Carol out there), its disappointing turn from Murray, and its lack of anything meaningful to say if the movie weren’t so goddamn annoying. Whether it’s Murray himself practically licking the other side of the screen, the perpetually obnoxious first two ghosts, or the films idiotic slapstick sensibilities that leave no easy gag unruined, the film isn’t just joyless; it’s actively pestersome, in a way that makes dead air seem preferable to its overloud cinematic contortions.

The saving grace of the film should be its ability to skewer the boob tube, and when it shows rather than tells, that bears out. The opening spoofs of an action-themed Christmas movie, or Robert Goulet’s Cajun Christmas, have that SNL parody verve. But when the film stays true to its single setting, and goes over the top in trying to tell you that television is all about sex appeal and scaremongering, you can’t help but roll your eyes at its college freshman level critique of the T.V. industry.

The bright spots in Scrooged are few and far between, but not wholly absent. While plenty of the special effects are chintzy, a handful of creative visual bits -- particularly the screen-faced, ghoul-organed Ghost of Christmas Future -- manage to impress with the inventiveness on display. At the same time, Karen Allen livens the film as Cross’s underserved love interest, who rises above the “here’s your trophy” writing of her character to bring a sense of brightness and genuine heart to the proceedings when she’s on screen.

But that’s not enough to save a film more interested in screeching in your ear for a hundred minutes with exaggerated clichés, a car crash of a transformation story, and another set of generic 1980s corporate douchebags that seemed to be a legally-mandated requirement of any movie comedy during the Reagan administration. Scrooged had all the potential in the world: a great star, a clearly durable premise, and the chance to put a roughed-edged twist on it to appeal to all the grumpy humbuggers in the audience who want an X-mas movie that isn’t all hugs and jingle bells. But it squanders that in favor of an unfunny two hours of overblown crap, less preferable this time of year than a lump of coal in your stocking.

Surprisingly, I didn't enjoy 'Scrooged' all that much.

I never really clicked with this 1988 release whilst I was watching it. Bill Murray is fine, the Ghost of Christmas Past is good and the bits of the plot involving Alfre Woodard's character are decent. That's all I have for noteworthy positives, though. The vibe of the film felt off to me. I didn't connect with Murray's Frank at any point, whether it be the past, the present or the future version of him.

I get, as Scrooge, you're supposed to dislike him, but I've seen a fair few versions of 'A Christmas Carol' and I feel like the Scrooge character is usually moreso cowardly bad, as in he'll be horrid to people behind their back or under his breath - as opposed to Frank Cross, who is in your face, over the top, overtly mean. Perhaps I'm misremembering or it just stuck out to me more here as I didn't like much else from the 100 or so minutes.

For an Xmas flick, also, it doesn't hit the Christmassy spot either. It could've done with more warmth, or at least some entertaining and/or funny moments; I did minorly chuckle a few times, I will say, but not nearly enough. I still wouldn't describe this as a 'bad' film, but it is quite far adrift of being a positive in my books.

I thought this would've be a good'un, many think it is which is fair, but for me I unfortunately didn't particularly like it.