Greatest Christmas Movies of All-Time: #2-Scrooged

People can get real uppity when you mess with tradition. Sometimes their bellyaching is justified, like when Coke switched to New Coke, but other times, traditions need to be broken. I’d say slavery was a good one to disregard, but then again, I’m just some Northern Yankee, perhaps people in Mississippi feel differently. That aside, there are many traditions which endure because, there’s no reason to mess with success. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Well, since no one could ever possibly argue there’s anything broken about Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, maybe that’s why critics panned Scrooged when it was originally released back in 1988. Perhaps they felt Bill Murray and Co. were screwing with a good thing. The New York Times critic believed it only worked in “fits and starts” and Roger Ebert gave it one measly star. However, I disagree. The movie is a welcome update to an old classic, with a great performance by Bill Murray, who we find at his caustic best.

Scrooged is a contemporary telling of the Charles Dickens classic, where Bill Murray plays the asshole TV executive Frank Cross. He’s a man who treats his employees shabbily, barely speaks to his devoted little brother, gives people towels as gifts and lives a solitary, bitter existence. Frank delights in driving the programming on his network, IBC, pushing the envelope at every turn and desiring only the most sensational of shows to hit the air. Can you blame him though, who wouldn’t want to see the Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors star in “The Night the Reindeer Died”?

Despite his success, Frank is a man at his breaking point, although he was the youngest President in the history of the network, he fears his boss, played by Robert Mitchum, is looking to replace him with a new, younger hot-shot. It doesn’t help that his boss may or may not be losing it, explaining to Frank he needs to create more programming for dogs and cats. On top of his career anxieties, Frank has little in the way of friends or family, owing much to his asocial, narcissistic behavior. Soon everything comes to a head for him when his old, dead boss comes back to warn him he needs to change his ways.

Cue the ghosts. Christmas Past comes in the form of a salty Brooklyn cabby, “It’s a bone you luck dog!” From this we learn Frank once had a love which he ignored in order to advance his own career. The violent little fairy, Christmas Present, played by the high-pitched Carol Kane, “It’s a toaster!” From her we learn Frank’s kind secretary, Grace (Alfre Woodard), is barely scraping by and on top of it her son hasn’t spoken since his father died. Then he’s visited by Christmas yet to come, who shows Frank if he doesn’t amend his ways, then Grace’s son will be institutionalized, his ex-girlfriend will become an unfeeling old crow and he’ll die.

Luckily for Frank, he gets another chance, but Bobcat Goldthwait, who Frank had fired earlier, had come back to kill him. Armed with a new, manic energy, Frank is able to convince Bobcat to join him in hijacking the IBC Christmas special. After taking control, Frank uses the IBC’s airwaves to pour out his heart and soul and to ask for his ex to come back to him. She comes back, old people dance in their living rooms, a mute boy finally speaks and a musical number is performed. Cue the sappy songs.

Hey, I never said this was a countdown of the five greatest movies of all-time, I said this was a countdown of the five finest Christmas films ever. In my review of the top-5 flicks, the common thread I’ve found is Christmas movies don’t tend to be high art; they’re usually films that play into our heightened feelings of nostalgia. Christmas is a time when you want to feel good; the weather is starting to go to hell and you have to spend an inordinate amount of time you’re your batshit crazy family, so you drop your pretense a bit and allow yourself to enjoy a brand of naked sentimentality, which under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t fall for.

So when Frank Cross, finally “gets it” at the end of Scrooged and leads a giant sing-a-long with the Solid Gold Dancers and the rest of the cast of IBC’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol, then by golly, you want to join in too. Critics are a jaded breed of people. I should know, I count myself amongst the amateur ranks, but I think critics who originally panned Scrooged weren’t filled with the Christmas spirit when they watched it. Although when it was first released, it wasn’t loved, Scrooged has actually gotten better and more appreciated with time, just as Bill Murray has become more loved over time, thus making Scrooged the #2 Christmas movie of all-time.