A film that follows the formula of Charles Dickens' classic Christmas story, only adapted for the film's time period. It may be a positive point for those who appreciate fidelity, but personally, I expected a more satirical and innovative approach to the original story. Despite this, it still provides several laughs at different moments in the plot.
A Christmas movie that shouldn't be on your top list.
If you have a long list of Christmas movies to go through, I recommend that you take this to your bottom list as it is superseded by other high quality movies.
I am going to quote what Roger Ebert said as it pinpoints the exact state of the movie:
quote “Scrooged” is one of the most disquieting, unsettling films to come along in quite some time. It was obviously intended as a comedy, but there is little comic about it, and indeed the movie’s overriding emotions seem to be pain and anger. This entire production seems to be in dire need of visits from the ghosts of Christmas."
For a Christmas Carol adaptation, I advise you to go look at :
https://trakt.tv/movies/scrooge-1951 or
https://trakt.tv/movies/a-christmas-carol-1999 or for an animated version
https://trakt.tv/movies/a-christmas-carol-2009
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.
What I love most about this movie is the ending where Frank gives his meaningful Christmas speech. If everyone thought that way this world would be a much better place, at least at Christmas time. "Put a Little Love In Your Heart".-Scrooged.
It’s not Christmas unless you’ve watched this
This is one of my all time favorite movies. I see more and more jokes every time I want it. Carol Kane is a stand out. I can't get through this movie with a dry eye. I watch at least 3 times a year. It was a very creative spin on an old and otherwise worn out story. You can't go wrong with this movie. Bill Murray's best movie.
It's not a good movie. Bill Murray at his most unhinged and unlikable. The sequence with the fairy hitting him is painfully unfunny.
Having said that, the last act is good and the message redeems the movie. The cab driver was great, too.
Still a great damn movie. Sad that Murray and Donner battled on the set. Not sure if I noticed the "free south Africa" BS Donner was pushing then (poster in the assistant's house and the control room studio) too bad he wasn't around to see what South Africa is doing to its white citizens now.
Version of Dickens' tale with special effects.
Pretty good film. Solid entry in my Christmas favorites. It's nothing crazy funny or thought provoking which I like but it definitely worked as something to watch for the holidays. I love the actor Bill Murray but I feel like this role just didn't suit him very well. Mostly because I couldn't tell when he had emotions or when he was serious. Kind of a silly thing to get hung up on but any time he'd yell or get angry I couldn't tell if he was serious. Rest of the movie is fairly good. I liked the casting of his secretary cause she's a good actor. Plot is pretty similar to the book so not too many surprises there. Quality might be a bit low overall. Just kinda felt cheap in some parts. But you can somewhat give them a pass for the time period it was made. But, yeah probably top 5 or 3 favorite Christmas movies. I'm not really one for them but this film was good. Solid 7/10
I'm glad I watched this before my Grandson. It's a good movie but not for kids.
Bill Murray grabs the reins and refuses to let go in this almost-one-man-show modernization of A Christmas Carol. It's a dark, biting and sarcastic take on the tale that's set firmly in the murk of the corporation-friendly '80s, but it completely falls apart on the back nine. The first act is an inspired lampoon of bad network television (and the bad network executives behind it) with Murray, deliciously sinister as the worst boss in America, at the height of his powers. It's when the narrative tries to cram in a tepid love story and a sudden, jolting redemption that the cornerstones begin to crumble.
This really could've worked if it didn't wear its intentions and inspirations so garishly on its chest, but subtlety is, sadly, not among the picture's attributes. A riotously fun opening forty minutes, followed by an uncomfortably transparent closing sixty.
One of the most inventive tellings of A Christmas Carol, Scrooged is hilarious holiday fun. In a clever play on the Dickens classic, television network president Frank Cross gets “Scrooged,” and is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas in an attempt to redeem him. Bill Murray gives an outstanding performance as Frank Cross, and is backed up by a superb supporting cast that includes Karen Allen, Bobcat Goldthwait, John Glover, and Carol Kane. Scrooged is an incredibly entertaining take on A Christmas Carol, and modernizes it for a new audience. “Yule Love It!”
"Did I forget something, big man?"
"God bless us, every one."
Man, someone is cutting Onions nearby. My eyes became instant 'Niagara Falls'.
One of my favorite chrismas movies of all time.
When Bill Murray's Frank Cross is mean, Murray is great. When Cross is nice, Murray is over the top and even talks to the audience in the end. Which almost ruins the movie.
I don't find Scrooged to be the holiday classic that some people think it is but there is a lot to like about it. I like the idea of injecting humor into the classic A Christmas Carol story but I find the film to live and die by Bill Murray's performance. His performance is pretty funny but it takes away from a fairly talented supporting cast. Its also not paced that well.
Moving on to #Scrooged in my annual Christmas viewing!
Haven't watched this in quite a long time, but I remember liking it when I was younger. And I'm surprised it's held up pretty well. It feels a little dated being so integrated into the 80's, but you expect that so it doesn't affect the movie too much. The cast is fantastic, each ghost is adapted well, and Bill Murray is great as the stand in for Ebenezer, playing his usual curmudgeon asshole perfectly. But ultimately his turn in the end feels a bit forced and easy. The movie's dark comedy beats play well, but it lacks the heart of the better versions of Dicken's classic. And that is what ultimately holds it back. That and the cringe worthy sing-a-long at the end. Still a fun Christmas watch that is now a little off the beaten path.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2018-12-27T01:57:29Z
[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.