AC20: Random Movie Review - Scrooged

We have all seen lots of adaptations of Charles Dickens's classic tale of A Christmas Carol. The Muppets made a very good musical out of it, Mickey Mouse and friends have done a version that has Scrooge McDuck and even Jim Carrey with the help of the then functional and in business ImageMovers did a very dark version of it which was pretty scary (even for Disney who distributed the film). But amongst all the adaptions, a modernised version was inevitable because some people like to do a new re-imagined take on something and sometimes its received well and other times it isn't. Today we look at a modernised version starring former Ghostbuster Bill Murray and directed by the legendary Richard Donner who gave us the original Superman films and helped establish the superhero genre which of course led to the many DC and Marvel films (successful that came after. So let's see how his take on A Christmas Carol plays out:

Set in the late 1980s, we meet the president of IBC Television Frank Cross (played by Murray) who like Scrooge in the original story, wants everyone of his employees to work all through the festive period. On IBC, he wants to make an extravagant live version of A Christmas Carol and have it be made during the holidays. Of course not many people are happy with doing this and this of course leads to him meeting his old and dead boss Lew Hayward (played by the late John Forsythe) who tells him that he will meet three spirits over the course of the night of Christmas Eve. From there, who knows what will happen.

So the film follows the original story well albeit with a number of changes with the obvious one being the time its set and the roles of each of the characters. Its also important to note that the film kind of follows the original story loosely to allow for some originality. Anyway I think the film is good. I was warned before seeing this that this would be a horror and while there are some gory bits, its actually more comedy than horror. But anyway, the time setting and how the story plays out, works really well. Everyone plays their parts well and I guess the only criticism I have is Murray's over acting which I'd say can be too much at times and just the mean spirited tone that the film goes on. But despite all that, its a good take on the classic story. Its not the best one in my opinion, but it is a very original take on it. 7/10