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I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

this new watching left me disappointed while in my memories, it was a good moment: i'm sure that the lack of subtitles put me in pain but anyway this time i found the movie really dark, oppressive and not really funny in spite of being a Christmas tale! The past work of Dickens is a gloom reading, the future work of Zemeckis won't be lighter... In addition, if Murray has a few good lines, 99% of his time is being a really cold, totally acid, egocentric TV producer and that hurts! So it's not like having Christmas with cool Venkman but with the sad Connors...Sure the end of this tale warms the heart but the way to get there is as painful as a cold, dark winter night...

Scrooged (1988): Dir: Richard Donner / Cast: Bill Murray, Karen Allen, Bob Goldthwait, John Forsythe, Carol Kane: A parody of the Charles Dickens classic with a modern take on the tale. Bill Murray plays Frank Cross, a cynical program executive who is the modern day Scrooge. He objects to his secretary taking time off to deal with his son's inability to speak. He fires someone on Christmas eve. Plus he is making everybody's life miserable on the set of the Charles Dickens play that he is producing. Bill Murray is hysterical as Cross who believes that he is going crazy during a long night of interruptions by three ghosts that showcases scenes from his life from past, present and future. Cross is humbled in humorous fashion until a third act where everything goes way over the top. Karen Allen plays a former girlfriend who lends her services to a homeless shelter. Through flashbacks Cross is reintroduced to their first encounter through their budding relationship until pride divides them. Bob Goldthwait plays a fired employee whose drunken spree goes into overdrive of singing carols and brandishing a shotgun. John Forsythe plays Cross's ghostly boss who returns to give him a warning. Carol Kane is delightful as the ghost of Christmas present who cheerfully smacks sense in Cross. While its humour is too crass for younger viewers, its satire view of the classic tale is a well produced holiday laugh fest. Score: 8 / 10

Scrooged (1988), directed by Richard Donner, takes a darkly funny poke at the classic Dicken's tale of the curmudgeonly miser Scrooge from A Christmas Carol. The hilarious as usual Bill Murray takes on the titular role who is updated to a cutthroat T.V. producer named Frank Cross. A selfish prick who will stop at nothing to make a profit. Unable to see the wicked path he has started down, Frank is visited by the ghost his mentor Lew Hayward (Forsythe), a philandering, dirtbag producer who taught Frank everything he knows (or knew). Seeing the error of his terrible decisions only after his death on a golf course, Lew tries to set Frank on the right path.What follows is more than just your three ghosts of Christmas, oh no, this flick turns them specters up to eleven my friends. With the likes of David Johanson as a grimy cigar chewing New York cabby aka Ghost of Christmas Past and Carol Kane as the adorably abusive Ghost of Christmas Present, the direction the story moves towards is both familiar enough to evoke sentimentality as well as bring the viewer to a manic and darkly funny place. The new spins on the old favorites hit all of the marks and even for the time the film was released it doesn't feel dated. Although, turn on the closed captioning for the Carol Kane scenes, her dialogue goes by high pitched and fast.

Richard Donner's Scrooged, although fairly odd in places, is a visual opus of glassy New York nightscapes and a prancing Bill Murray sporting a grinchy attitude and a hairdo that would make Sonic the Hedgehog jealous. Murray plays ad TV mogul Frank Cross with a bitter resentment that's just this side of mean, but that's always been his charm, blurring the lines between comedy and drama, seriousness and farce until we're not quite sure what kind of performance we're getting from him. Thrill follows the standard Dickens play by play, showing us a regressed, antisocial prick who gradually opens up over the course of one magical Christmas Eve, after being visited by three ghosts. The standout here is David Johansen as the Ghost Of Christmas Past, here manifested as a howling lunatic of a cab driver, a decrepit old ghouls that keeps Frank on his feet via manic energy for his segment of the film. Carol Kane will puzzle as the swooning, creepy Ghost Of Christmas Present, a doped out Tinkerbell in her twilight years. There's wicked fun from other actors including John Forsythe, John Glover, Karen Allen as Frank's old flame, and a nice Yuletide vibe that's only hampered by an extremely out of place third act monologue from Murray that feels forced, demented and uncomfortable, otherwise, solid holiday fun:)