Scrooged

Now that we're past Thanksgiving, we can start on the Christmas movies, with the first selection being the 1988 Scrooged. If you have the Starz package, it's supposed to be on Starz Comedy twice tomorrow, but it's also on DVD.

The movie starts off with a camera panning over a winter scene that we eventually learn is Santa's workshop at the North Pole. Santa, Mrs. Claus, and the elves are busy working, until some commandos try to take out Santa! Who should come to the rescue but Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors. It turns out we're watching a promo for a Christmas special on the IBC network. This year's jewel in the crown in IBC's Christmas lineup is a live version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, with Buddy Hackett as Ebeneezer Scrooge and, showing off the 80s provenance of the movie, Mary Lou Retton as Tiny Tim and the Solid Gold Dancers!

IBC executive Frank Cross (Bill Murray) doesn't like what he sees as an anodyne promo for the Christmas specials, so he's come up with a much harsher promo based on the idea that they want to put the fear of God over missing the specials into people (there were VCRs back then, but no DVRs of course). One of Frank's underlings, Eliot Loudermilk (Bobcat Goldthwait) doesn't like the promo, so Frank responds by firing him!

Frank, as it turns out, is a driven man who has absolutely no sympathy for anybody around him. As you can guess from the title of the movie, Scrooged, there's shades of Dickens' A Christmas Carol in the presentation of Frank's life, and not just that TV special that's going on. Ebenezer fired an employee right at Christmas, and Frank has his own Tiny Tim in his life in the form of his secretary Grace's (Alfre Woodard) kid, who hasn't spoken a word since he saw his own father die five years ago.

And then Frank is visited by a spirit, not that of Jacob Marley but that of his former boss Lew Hayward (John Forsythe), who died of a heart attack on the golf course some years back. Lew tells Frank that Frank is going to be visited by three more ghosts, starting with the Ghost of Christmas Past tomorrow at noon.

Frank, of course, knows all about the Dickens story, so when the ghosts start coming he has an idea of what's up, and tries to think of ways to stop it, which is of course futile. Part of Frank's past involves a girlfriend Claire (Karen Allen) whom he lost because he was too focused on his career; his lack of sympathy makes it questionable whether he's going to be able to win her back without the same change Ebenezer Scrooge went through. One big change from the Dickens story is that Frank has a boss of his own in the form of network head Preston (Robert Mitchum).

Pretty much everybody knows the Dickens story, so everybody should know more or less where this story is going to end up. But this time it's been turned into an over-the-top comedy, as we see right from the beginning with the ridiculous Christmas specials (Robert Goulet's Cajun Christmas, for example). Eliot doesn't just get fired; he loses his wife and home and responds by preparing to go on a spree killing. The Ghost of Christmas Present (Carol Kane) is a version of Billie Burke's Glinda from The Wizard of Oz, except with a huge dose of cartoon violence added.

Then there are the cameos. John Houseman is in one of his last roles (he died a month before the film's release) as the narrator of the TV version of A Christmas Carol. Anne Ramsey also died before the film's release; she plays alongside her husband as two homeless people in the shelter run by Claire. And then there's the great song over the closing credits, sadly mostly cut off by the Starz/Encore version I DVRed some time back:



(The song is heard, although we don't see that video in the closing credits.)

Some of the IMDb reviewers didn't seem to get that Scrooged is supposed to be an over-the-top comedy, and didn't like it as a result. I, on the other hand, loved it, both for its slightly warped take on the Dickens story and for its reminder 30 years on of the 80s. (Younger viewers, if you show it to them what with the film's language, probably won't know many of the cameos and certainly won't remember the Solid Gold Dancers.) Since I was a teenager when the movie came out, the movie fits squarely in the nostalgia era for me.

If you want a good laugh with a Christmas movie, you could do far worse than to watch Scrooged.