Review of Scrooged (1988) by Kai82 — 03 Oct 2021

One of the essential Christmas movies, a great reimagination of Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” in modern times with an amazing Bill Murray. I never understood the critics here that hated the movie with passion.

They were not that much out of touch back then as today.” A Christmas Carol” is one of them most famous works of Charles Dickens and tells the story of the old and cold or lets say life hardened Ebenezer Scrooge and his self discovery journey on Christmas where he is visited by ghosts of past, present and future Christmas.

It is a timeless classic, creative and something critics and casual readers will praise together. Instead of playing it safe with a normal adaption they transferred the setting to modern times. Story: Frank Cross is on the top of the world.

He is president of IBC Television and pretty ruthless. For Christmas he wants to make big money with a live adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” and even his commercial idea is really messed up. He did not know that he will have a bigger part in this as he will be visited by the ghost of past, present and future Christmas.

I truly love this story. It is so hard to screw this up with additions to a classic story and you see how “modernizing” ruined many modern movies, series and characters. Here it works. We get the classics of the old story, a modern take that works well and of cause Bill Murray who positively exceeds at being Bill Murray.

Characters: Bill Murray as Frank Cross is awesome and his performance alone is worth watching the movie. Of cause the ghost of Christmas past, present and future with Carol Kane, David Johansen and Robert Hammod.

All are amazing and nail their roles. They leave an impact and are truly rememberable. Karen Allen as Claire Phillips is excellent to and I wished she had more screentime. The rest of the cast enhance the movie too and I see no missteps.

Visually I say the effects, costumes and make up work well. For make up they were nominated for the Oscars to give some perspective. They made again no missteps here in this category. I nearly forgot the music which would be a shame.

It is so sneakingly good that you do not notice how much it enhances the atmosphere. It you pay attention you will recognize a real good soundtrack. Lastly I want to praise director Richard Donner for this movie too.

Overall I repeat this is a Christmas classic and if it has not nostalgic value it will certainly get it sooner or later. An easy 10/10.