Scrooged (1988)

Bill Murray is a TV executive Scrooge, and his ghosts fight dirty.

Frank Cross has turned Christmas into a ratings product and himself into a monster; three very aggressive ghosts (a cabbie, a fairy, an empty suit) have one night to fix him. Richard Donner's modern Carol is cynical, chaotic, and finally sincere — and Murray sells the breakdown and the redemption in the same breath.

Bill Murray had taken four years off after Ghostbusters; this dark, strange Dickens update was his comeback. Richard Donner directs Frank Cross's redemption like a man being haunted in real time — the ghosts are genuinely frightening, the television satire is still sharp, and Carol Kane's Ghost of Christmas Present beats Murray senseless with a toaster between lines of pure sugar. Critics in 1988 were split; the decades since have been kind, and Murray's final live-to-the-camera monologue about miracles is now quoted by people who have never seen the film.

From the Film

Cast

Good to know: A modern retelling of Dickens's A Christmas Carol, it casts Bill Murray as a cynical television executive haunted by three spirits on Christmas Eve.

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