There’s not many people who’d argue against Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol being the most quintessential seasonal story that’s ever been put to paper – one that doesn’t involve mangers, virgin births and a trio of wise men, of course – and as a result, we’ve seen a plethora of adaptations come down the pipe that’s contain everything from a mo-capped Jim Carrey to Muppets.
However, surely the most unhinged of adaptations must be Richard Donner’s Scrooged, a hearty, modernised, madcap vision of the timeless tale that recast the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge as Bill Murray’s feral-minded TV executive as his shitty world view is assaulted by ghosts more likely to have escaped from Ghostbusters than they have the pages of Dickens’ story.
So gather round, brace yourself and prepare to weather a well meaning but slightly unhinged final monologue that sees one of literature’s most beloved tales get the eighties treatment like never before or since.
As Christmas rapidly approaches, television executive and professional bastard Frank Cross is running his staff ragged as he pushes the hard to put out a live broadcast of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol on Christmas Eve night. A devout believer in the 80s, more is more ethos, Frank has absolutely no qualms about throwing his metaphorical weight around, making his long-suffering personal assistant, Grace, work late and even firing hapless underling Elliot Loudermilk for having the temerity to disagree with him.
However, an existence spent making everybody’s life hell and gifting company towels to his own brother doesn’t come without some spiritual comeuppance and with barely a day to go until the show is broadcast, Frank is paid a visit by his old boss, Lew Hayward. Nothing too strange about that you’d think, however, Lew died of a heart attack seven years ago and all that time in the grave hasn’t exactly been kind to his complexion. However, the moldy old fart is here to give Frank an ultimatum: change his asshole ways or suffer in the afterlife for ever more.
To further aid his point, Lew tells Frank he will be visited by three ghosts who will proceed to belabour this point to deranged extremes as as he awaits his trio of appointments from beyond the grave, his stress levels only increase. However, in the midst of all this yule time chaos, a sliver of salvation lies in the form of Claire, his first love who now selflessly runs a homeless shelter and still, inexplicably, carries a torch for the massive jerk.
Can the collective trauma inflicted by the three Spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future change Frank’s ways for good, or will a lifetime of sadistic bullying damn him for evermore?
To put it charitably, Scrooged is a bit of a mess, but to state it as plainly as Frank Cross himself, Richard Donner’s Xmas opus is all over the fucking place as the damn thing never sits still for a second as it ricochets between multiple tones and a bunch of zany set pieces that dares a constantly flustered Bill Murray to try and keep up. One minute we’re going for eccentric, Looney Tunes wackiness as Frank plays the utter git to the hilt, the next it’s trying for genuinely poignancy as we dip into the lives of Karen Allen’s virtuous Claire or Alfre Woodard’s struggling, widowed single mother. However, to fill in the gaps, Donner sprinkles in some rather startling nightmare fuel for a family movie, opting to not fuck about when it comes to deploying the supernatural stuff which no doubt burned it’s way into the psyche of many a child of that era alongside watching that horse drown in Neverending Story and virtually 85% of everything that occurs in Return To Oz.
However, when discussing Scrooged, the first topic you have to acknowledge is the ball of kinetic energy that arguably ranks as Bill Murray’s most deranged performance. In fact, during the later moments of the film, there are times when you’d swear that the Murraycane is on the verge of a genuine breakdown as he furiously ad-libs with a cracking voice as his receding hairline is framed by maniacal bedhead like the halo of a psychotic break. However, while Murray’s rampaging sometimes causes a disconnection with the overall message – his climactic, festive, humanist rant feels less like his soul has been saved and more like the gibbering of a man driven completely insane – no one can play the likable bastard quite like him and his demented performance (reportedly born from disagreements with Donner about the movie’s tone) manages to hold the whole disjointed thing together.
However, similarly acting without any restraint, is Richard Donner who pumps the movie with a demented, impish energy that frequently embraces the ghoulishly implausible. For example, it’s not enough that Jacob Marley replacement Lew Hayward is dead, but in lieu of chains and moaning, we get John Forsythe fully made up as an eyeless, cobwebby corpse straight out of EC Comics complete with a moment where a mouse pushes a golf ball out of his mangey skull. Elsewhere, the Ghost of Christmas past is a cackling, Jackie Gleeson-esque, cab driver played by David Johansen of the New York Dolls; Carol Kane’s Ghost of Christmas Present is a helium-voiced sadist who delivers an unending stream of slap-stick violence to Frank (“The bitch hit me with a toaster!”) and the Ghost of Christmas Future is a hulking, TV-faced, grim reaper with a rib cage full of scream souls lurking under his robes.
Along with Bobcat Goldthwait as a fired exec who becomes a drunk, divorced, shotgun waving vagrant in a space of a day and a running joke where a female censor repeatedly suffers Tom & Jerry style work place accidents, Donner obviously didn’t find any subtlety wrapped up under his christmas tree that year, but there’s something about that scattershot chaos that Scrooged brings that I’ve always found strangely appealing. Its supremely messy collision of cynicism and wamth is truly unlike every other Christmas comedy I’ve ever seen other that the similarly mean-spirited Gremlins and Krampus and yet the damn thing simply refuses to be dull for even a second.
Loaded with cameos that’ll mostly go over the head of younger viewers (the opening fake movie called The Night The Reindeer Died, which sees Lee Majors fend off terrorists from Santa’s workshop is a cracker worth pulling) and crammed with as much haywire energy than both Donner and Murray can muster, Scrooged certainly isn’t perfect, but its unpredictable, unstoppable momentum is as confounding exhilarating as a coke fiend bellowing Christmas greetings directly into your face as he muscles fifty dollars into your hand and is guaranteed to amuse the Dickens out of you…
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