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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Paramount
Salesrank: 281
Released: November 9, 1999 |
| Our Price: $8.84 |
| Used Price: $9.16 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
A modern, comedic telling of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 13-AUG-2002
Media Type: DVD
Description of Scrooged:
Most critics couldn't get behind Bill Murray's modern retelling of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, finding it too unfocused at times and not nearly wicked enough. Still, if you're a Murray fan, you have to enjoy his deliciously nasty portrayal of the world's meanest TV executive, who has his cathartic moment one cold Christmas night in New York City. The various ghosts lead him on a ghost-town tour of Manhattan, with stops at holidays past, present, and future and a Kumbaya moment when Al Green and Annie Lennox sing "Put a Little Love in Your Heart." The effects are otherworldly, but one wishes the writing were as sharp as Murray's edgy portrayal. --Marshall Fine
Scrooged Reviews:
Scrooged 
2009-12-27 - Bill Murray is a great actor, this wasn't his best performance but its still was a good show, its for people born in the late 60's to the 80's. its a movie you could definitely watch more then once, once a year right before Christmas!
Yearly tradition 
2009-12-26 - For me this movie is on the list with Miracle on 34th Street. It is a must watch every year.
Family Tradition
2009-12-25 - This was my Dad and my only holiday tradition and watching that little fairy hit Bill in the face with a toaster just brought back all those nice family memories. Hilarious movie with a well delivered message. Merry Christmas and if you dont believe you're gonna burn for it!
Murray at his most mocking makes merry even with Marley 
2009-12-24 - I had very mixed feelings about Bill Murray through most of the 80s. He was never one of my very favorites on SNL - seems to me he skated through that show, and though his easy charm was often an asset, sometimes it just looked lazy. In his film work, he seemed to get increasingly ornery in his sarcastic attitudes, climaxing I think with the GHOSTBUSTERS films, where he almost seems to be mocking the audience and the rest of the cast and crew, acknowledging how stupid this crap is and that he's just going for the payoff. At least, that was my take on him at the time, and by the early 90s I'd just about had enough of him; thankfully WHAT ABOUT BOB? and GROUNDHOG DAY changed my mind. And the rest is history, as he's gone on to have arguably the best and most interesting career of any SNL alum. Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin are doing stupid family comedies and endless sequels; Murray is working with Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch. 'Nuff said.
SCROOGED comes from the period that I still have some issues with, but the thing is, he's SUPPOSED to be a total jerk throughout most of the film, and the snappy one-liners and flip attitude just help to make Scrooge (here TV executive Frank Cross) a little different from other Scrooges, and more relevant today; at least it feels like that's what's being attempted. It worked pretty well, really, up until the ending transformation which, being still pretty much played for laughs, rings rather hollow. Maybe we're not supposed to really believe in it or care, as long as we've had some good yucks? I dunno.
Anyway, it all boils down to our exec Frank putting on his own version of "A Christmas Carol", this one totally over-the-top and promoted so heavily that "nobody will want to miss it", with commercials so intense that one old lady dies while watching the ad. Frank of course thinks it's a good idea to use that as part of the promotion. But he's such a nasty and seemingly irredeemable egomaniac that his old dead partner Lew (John Forsyth) decides to send our familar ghostly friends to visit him and show him just how worthwhile the holiday that he sneers at really is. They are cheroot-chomping cabbie David Johansen (Past), sadistic fairy Carol Kane (Present) and a more traditional skeletal Yet To Come, and they show him his happier, less-greedy life (with girlfriend Karen Allen who in this rendition is still around to give our younger-than-usual Scrooge/Cross a different kind of happy ending after the credits roll), all the ways he could help out others, etc. You know the drill.
The cast is the best thing about this; even if I'm still a bit amibivalent about Murray in this role, you can't really mind any movie that features a put-upon Bobcat Goldthwaite and tough-but-resigned Alfre Woodard sharing duties as the Bob Cratchit figure; Mary Lou Retton as Tiny Tim; Robert Mitchum as the certifiable insane network CEO who wants to make programs for cats; and best of all, Lee Majors as himself playing a commando come to rescue Santa in the faux-Christmas special "The Night the Reindeer Died" that opens the film.
"Lee, this is ONE Santa who's goin' out the FRONT door."
Yeah, it's not the most "Christmasy" holiday movie, but it's definitely got it's moments.
A modern-day Christmas Carol
2009-12-19 - Imagine Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol set in the modern world. That's what director Richard Donner and writers Mitch Glazer & Michael O'Donoghue have brought us. Instead of 19th-Century Britain, it's now 20th-Century New York City. Instead of Ebenezer Scrooge, we get Bill Murray as Frank Cross. Instead of sentimental drama, we get some satirical and verbal comedy. The only things that stays the same are the three ghosts, the Scrooge personality, and the definition of Christmas. I wouldn't consider this one of the greatest films of the holidays, but I will say that it works well as a Bill Murry comedy. There are dozens of funny jokes and plentiful sight gags that you can enjoy watching again and again. Overall, I'd say that this is a very good Christmas film and I did enjoy watching it, but please not that it may not be appropriate for little kids.
