It’s Friday morning which means it’s time for The 90-Minute Movie! Welcome back. And if it’s your first time can I entice you to stay? Subscribing is free for you, but means the world to me.
How is your holiday season going so far? Have you traveled through the Lincoln Tunnel to find your birth dad? Shot your eye out? Drained your city of electrical power? Slept with your home exchange host’s brother? Don’t worry, there’s still time. Just like there’s still time for more classic holiday traditions, like hanging out with three ghosts to learn the error of your ways…
I simply can’t let another year pass without writing about 1988’s Scrooged (101 minutes). I just adore Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and almost all of the film adaptations that have been made. It’s a sound concept that lends itself to creativity and revision throughout the years. Think of A Muppet Christmas Carol and how Michael Kaine performs a master class in acting with puppets. It’s a malleable story with a lot to offer in the way of holiday cheer (and fear). I’m covering Scrooged in particular because I think it gets overlooked by my fellow millennials as a Christmas classic.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I have a soft spot for anti-Christmas or unlikely Christmas movies. The sugary-sweet ones aren’t really my thing unless I’m roughly four mugs deep in mulled wine. Scrooged definitely fits the bill with its excruciatingly modern retelling. Frank Cross (Bill Murray) is the high-powered President of a TV network. He is mean, he is egotistical, he very badly needs therapy. As the Christmas season rolls around, Frank is determined to make television history with his live broadcast of A Christmas Story named, of course, Scrooge. The program’s title is our first tip off to just how satirical this movie can and will be.
Scrooged was not super well received at the time of its release and, like almost every movie I cover on this damn thing, got more popular over time. It’s hardened and rough around the edges and Murray’s crabby-ass portrayal of Frank Cross can be off putting. I will admit that there are a lot of moments in his performance that feel stilted or forced. It’s like we’ve woken him up on the wrong side of the bed and asked him to act. The weirdness can probably be attributed to the poor relationship between Murray and director Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon, The Goonies). I’m not sure Donner truly understood Murray’s schtick, and Murray got tired of being misunderstood almost immediately. Not only did these two not get along but screenwriter Michael O’Donaghue was reportedly crabby as hell too.
The making of: a mess.
What was made: a delight.
If you can set aside the weird Murray vibes (which is only part of the time, because he otherwise nails it) you’ll see that this movie is working with a lot of unique elements that make it special. It’s a modern take on the classic, using a television station and New York City as the backdrop for Cross’ misdeeds. And while the movie’s satire is very pointedly directed at the yuppies of the late 80’s, it all still feels relevant to us nearly 35 years later. Cross is obsessed with work and hates anyone who feels or acts otherwise. “I work late, YOU work late!” He screams at his assistant Grace (Alfre Woodward) as she tries to leave one night to take her son to the doctor. (She is our Bob Cratchit if you haven’t already caught on.) Cross is obsessed with output and excellence at all costs. He wins a humanitarian award, and accepts it between gritted teeth because although he doesn’t believe in any of it, it is another feather in his cap. Another way for him to feel important. And while network television may not rule our lives like it did in 1988, social media certainly does and the criticism feels just as potent when applied to our lives now.
Scrooged also employs postmodernist techniques both visually and in its storytelling that really capture the disorientation that comes from, well, time traveling with a bunch of ghosts. Most compelling is that the script disposes of the traditional structure of ghostly visitations. Rather than have the ghosts come to Cross one after the other in a single night, the ghosts haunt him randomly throughout the course of a couple days. One moment he is hailing a cab, and the next he’s in his childhood home. One moment he is with the frozen corpse of an unhoused man he meets, and the next he’s stumbling through the set of his TV show. Cross’ sense of time and place is continuously fucked with, causing him to become more and more unhinged. Rather than take Cross to see his gravestone as he does for Scrooge in so many other films, the Ghost of Christmas Future instead takes Cross to his casket in front of an incinerator. Then in the blink of an eye Cross is inside the casket, his feet catching on fire as he screams.
Did I mention my third favorite part of this movie is how dark and disturbing it is? Well it is. Christmas was once a time to tell ghost stories. Why shy away from the inherent darkness that comes from the winter? Just like Krampus, which I wrote about last week, Scrooged welcomes back the tradition of spooky stories during the holiday season. Cross is haunted even before his first ghost arrives, as he starts to hallucinate at a business lunch. He sees an eyeball in his water glass and a waiter on fire before he runs out of the restaurant crazed and upset. Other renditions of A Christmas Carol rely too heavily on the feel good bits of the story and not upon the fact that Scrooge is a haunted man because he’s a horrible man.
If you can overlook Murray’s rather over-the-top and cantankerous performance, Scrooged is full of memorable and truly funny moments that make this an annual watch for me. The cast is stacked with comedians (Carol Kane, Bobcat Goldthwait), famous New Yorkers (David Johansen of the New York Dolls), bizarre cameos (Buddy Hacket, Lee Majors, Robert Goulet) and Oscar nominees (Robert Mitchum, Alfre Woodard). Their performances offset Murray even if it does feel like everyone’s a little tired of him. Overall, it’s a solid entry into the oversaturated and saccharine Christmas movie canon and deserves to have its popularity continue to grow with time.
Yup, Scrooged is one of the four Christmas favourites in this house. Gremlins, Batman Returns, Muppet Christmas Carol and this.
The dark humour is very well done. The sign he has in his office “Cross : A thing they nail people to” is vey funny as are the more random bits like when he does the Richard Burton impersonation at the shelter
However, I do still get emotional when the Ghost of Christmas Past shows him his parents and he breaks down. It’s a nice moment to show he does have a heart
A great article that means I might end up watching the film tonight 😁👍🏼