Finally, some technicolor in my yearly look at holiday films. This one I discovered last year when it was on AMC as a rerun. Just by the name, you know that the film is partially based on Charles Dickins’ A Christmas Carol. While Scrooged follows the basic story points of the story, the whole approach is contemporary and adds some snarky humor to it.
1. Retelling a Classic
Not to sound like a broken record but the film does take some liberties with how it’s being told. Frank Cross is a television executive who’s a real slime. He is assigned with putting together a live taping of the Dickins’ classic story for his channel. Making more of a jerk is when he makes all the workers continue production during the holiday.
Bill Murray owns the role as Frank, and he can easily make the character become sleazy and just a plain jerk. What I like about him is that he has competition since he sees his competition who is more professional than him. Cross also has a woman in his life who tries to bring him down from his massive ego. Claire tries to bring him down to Earth when Frank is just being a controlling boss.
And as you expect, he is visited by the Three Ghosts of Christmas: the past, present, and silent future. I’ll talk about them in a moment since there’s other stuff going on during the movie. I feel that the movie tries to at least have different sub-plots go on that tie to the central story. They work for the most part and gives the film its own identity. Like one where Frank let’s go of a worker, Elliot, who disagrees with him on the content of the live show.
As we follow him, he becomes demented and tries to kill Frank with a rifle. Another is when Frank’s assistant Grace having a son that can’t speak. He’s the heart of the film and is supposed to be the Tiny Tim in the film. None of it I think feels like it’s overkill, but it makes the film highlight the main thing about Frank. That his crappy actions have consequences. Which ultimately sets him up to see various ghosts and humbling up.
2. Film’s Tone
This is the only thing that may make people not like the film. The whole film has a very cynical tone that makes it different from the other holiday films. I genuinely think that it works for our times, even though it came out during the late 80s. For instance, the story is well known that for the late Richard Donner to even consider to make the film a comedic holiday film with an edge is something to admire.
Anyways, how the spirits are done matches with what the film is going for. To teach Frank a lesson in humility and to be caring. One thing that I like is that they are presented as paranormal and physical. In fact, the whole film leaned more into the ghost parts since Ghostbusters was Murray’s best film at that time. The spirits really scare and abuse Frank to drive the message even further.
Out of all the ghosts that I like, the Ghost of Christmas Future has an interesting design. Even though it’s limited with looking like Death incarnate, the film has the spirit have a television head to show Frank’s expression. One scene that I like is near the end, Frank is just trying to process what’s going on. Behind him is tv’s playing the live show and the spirit grows to try and grab Frank. It’s scary and I love it.
The film manages to balance being a dark humor and being sweet. It’s a whiplash of emotions when you’re laughing at the cynical part and then you see the sad scenes which involve Frank missing out on his family get together. The whole conflicting tones could’ve failed since it would be jarring. It works since it’s never abrupt and our focus stays on Frank trying to process what he’s seeing and just taking it all in.
3. Overall
This is my third film that I watched of the late Richard Donner. He did a great job making a holiday film that doesn’t involve guns and action. Since he made Lethal Weapon prior to this one which takes place during the holidays. Scrooged is a different holiday film that isn’t meant for anyone but broadens itself in a slew of holiday classics.
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