Scrooged
Director: Richard Donner
Writer: Mitch Glazer, Michael O’Donoghue
Based on: Charles Dickens‘ novella A Christmas Carol
Cast: Bill Murray, Karen Allen, John Forsythe, John Glover, Bobcat Goldthwait, David Johansen, Carol Kane, Robert Mitchum, Alfre Woodard, Michael J. Pollard

Plot:
Frank Cross (Bill Murray) is a TV producer. Rich, successful and cynical, he always strives to find the lowest common denominator to make most people watch his station. The current project is a live version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which Frank has spiced up, among other things with show girls. But just before the show starts, Frank is visited by his dead mentor Lew Hayward (John Forsythe) who warns him that he will be visited by three (other) ghosts to try to redeem him.

Scrooged was one of the films I used to watch regularly as a child, but I didn’t see it as an adult until now (or actually December, when it was screened at a local cinema). And as usual it is fascinating how different you see a childhood film as an adult. I enjoyed it then, I enjoy it now, but apart from my interestingly selective recollection, there were just so many things I never saw before.

[Spoilers, I guess]

One of the things I never saw before (probably also because I only ever saw the film in German and I doubt that there was a proper translation) was one of the TV shows on Cross’ channel, stylistically a 50s sitcom called “Daddy’s Chasing Beaver”. Generally the parody in Cross’ marketing philosophy was really nice and something that I certainly didn’t realize when I was a kid.

I could recall the Ghost of Christmas Past (David Johansen) quite well, but neither the Ghost of Christmas Present (Carol Kane) – who was honestly hilarious – nor the Ghost of Christmas Future stuck with me – even though the latter is fucking scary, I can’t remember being afraid as a child.

Being an adult also means being more critical (at least in my case) so it really bugged me what an asshole Frank is and that his redemption, especially with Claire (Karen Allen) came way too easy. I particularly hated how Claire apparently spent 15 years pining after him, dropping everything at the smallest sign that Frank might not be a complete asshole. That’s not how these things work. It’s also a change from the original where getting a woman becomes part of the price when you behave right.

Generally I found interesting how the original story was interpreted. In two instances this was especially apparent: one, when Frank was shown his own funeral, the horror of it shifted from “nobody loved Frank enough to show up at his funeral (except for his brother and sister-in-law)” to the fact that his body was incinerated. And two, in the original Scrooge is not only morally reformed, but that reformation comes with a obiligation to give financially as well. In Scrooged, Frank snatches the coin out of the air that play!Scrooge would have spent to buy the turkey and never gives it back, his entire speech is about his change of heart and love in the world but never about materially giving anything to anyone, and Claire abandons her charitable work to be happy with her love. Is this an indictment of a charity culture that tries to mask structural inequality by giving money on a personal level or is it a message that as long as you’re a good person, you don’t need to actually do something about the injustices of the world? I don’t know, but it’s certainly an interesting deviation.

Summarizing: fun, but not quite as innocent as I remembered.