This time last year I did a feature on my #1 Christmas essential movie, Bernard And The Genie. This year, at my mini-geek niece’s insistence, we are moving on to our seasonal second favourite, Scrooged.
The mini-geek, I should add, is only four but has adopted an early love of all things ‘scary’. With her mummy’s permission therefore we decided to embark on this holiday-appropriate tale of eyeballs in vodka, abusive fairies and Bill Murray doing that comic schtick he did so well before he decided to reinvent himself in drama.
Scrooged is, as you can guess by the title, a late-80s adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Frank Cross (Murray) is a mean-spirited, sadistic, TV network president. His unforgiving attitude and endless cynicism land him in trouble with the spirits of Christmas who set about showing him exactly where his life went wrong and where it’s all headed if he doesn’t change his ways.
So far, so expected. The movie however is jammed with beautifully dated 80s aspirational nonsense, from the black-ash furniture to the excitement over VCRs. It’s the decade of my childhood and I adore it in all its unrelenting yuppie awfulness. In fact that’s probably where my love for this film is really rooted. Sure, the ghosts are great (A repulsive taxi-drive into the past, a present-day fairy who clouts Frank around the face repeatedly with a toaster, and a seven-foot ghoul of the looming future) but really it’s all about the slapstick and nostalgia.
For my money, Murray is as good here as he ever was and, though it’s perhaps not as well remembered as Groundhog Day, it’s still excellent fun. Scrooged is not high-minded, but as far as contemporary(-ish) adaptations go the ‘Me, me, me’ decade has plenty of fodder for a really recognisable caricature of Scrooge without having to resort to making him genuinely nasty. He’s casually cruel and entirely self-absorbed, but also undeniably empty and unthinking. The transition into a better man is reasonably believable and Murry is utterly reprehensible but never entirely hateful.
The very tail end of the film may be painfully saccharine, but the final descent into cheese only happens after what’s been a genuinely entertaining journey and a ridiculously silly gun-point climax. It’s almost forgivable at that point. (Almost… but not quite.) Don’t let that deter you though. The final five minutes of agonising schmaltz are more or less what the fast-forward button was invented for, though as the mini-geek didn’t seem to mind we let it slide this time.
Karen Allen (Indiana Jones) is Murray’s lost love, and Alfre Woodard (Memphis Beat) his Cratchit-like secretary Grace, but you can also expect appearances from the inexplicable Bobcat Goldthwaite (Police Academy), Carol Kane (Annie Hall), Robert Mitchum and more bit-part cameos than you can shake a stick at. Though they are admittedly from people you probably don’t remember you’ve forgotten.
It’s a grand old nostalgia trip, and a good reminder of Bill Murray before he turned serious. You really can’t go too far wrong. Stick on the Christmas lights, grab the tinsel and enjoy the memory of holidays past… peppered liberally with brick-sized mobile phones.
Lady T
Lady T is a great lover of British TV, which is helpful as that's mostly what she gets to watch. She strongly believes that tea can't be made using a microwave, that children's programming really was better when she was a kid, and that there's nothing in the world that can't be solved with a liberal application of common sense. She very much enjoys reading but like most of the rest of the world would some day like to write a book herself. If she ever succeeds in doing so there's a pretty good chance she'll never shut up about it. She can be contacted at lady_t_220 @ yahoo.co.uk.
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