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Scrooged
By Charles Cassady Jr.,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Dated comedy is part Ghostbusters, part Dickens.

A Lot or a Little?
What you will—and won't—find in this movie.
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Community Reviews
Based on 10 parent reviews
Has a great message to it like its source of inspiration but a bit too profane, violent, and scary for smaller children. Fine for teens and up
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Crass adaptation that shows off Bill Murray's talents
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What's the Story?
It's Christmas in New York City, and Frank Cross (Bill Murray), selfish, workaholic, hard-drinking, miserly, and manic president of a mythical American TV network, is overseeing, among other outlandish broadcast projects, a live Christmas Eve performance of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (the tale is called "Scrooge,' throughout, rather than its original title). Thinking only of money and ratings, Frank vulgarizes the classic plot with showgirls and mice (based on a theory that cats are developing TV-watching habits), shrugging off a Christmas-dinner invite from his brother and firing the one programming executive who questions him. Then, in the evenings leading up to the big show, Frank is himself visited by real-life Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Future, who try to show him the error of his ways before it's too late.
Is It Any Good?
SCROOGED is a head-on crash of two family faves, A Christmas Carol and Ghostbusters, neither one quite winning out. Some early SNL folk worked on it -- Bill Murray most obviously, but also writer Michael O'Donahue, whose style of humor was often brutally dark. It's a strange, mood-swingy blend of mistletoe and graveyard mold that doesn't hang together gracefully. A good comedy-fantasy with some heart for the holidays may repose here, but the movie is heavily-tinseled by expensive production values, epic gags, and special effects that tend to go against Dickens' poignancy. The script eagerly does literal yuppie-bashing, as Frank Cross is physically pummeled and tortured; even with isolated genius moments (Christmas Past is a Yellow Cabbie in a time-travel taxi), you feel this property is exactly the sort of gaudy and violent entertainment Frank Cross would air at Christmas. Murray himself, at his best underplaying, mugs hysterically. Kids might like that, but when he unintelligibly impersonates Welsh actor Richard Burton or quotes the plant from Little Shop of Horrors, it's funny stand-up but don't fit the character well.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about all the different variations on A Christmas Carol ever since Dickens wrote it. Tell kids that while Dickens was alive he HATED copies and stage versions (there being no movies in his Victorian era). What would Dickens have thought of this one?
Ask kids what their favorite renditions of the Scrooge story are, and why.
Much of the humor here focuses on the shallowness, greed, and sensation of commercial television -- yet this was before "reality TV" and prime-time game shows, which brought new levels of exploitation (couples taking lie-detector tests over infidelity; celebrities fighting drug addiction; women trying to marry for money; etc.). Is TV today worse than when Scrooged was released?
Movie Details
- In theaters: November 23, 1988
- On DVD or streaming: November 9, 1999
- Cast: Alfre Woodard , Bill Murray , Bobcat Goldthwaite , Carol Kane , John Forsythe , Karen Allen , Lee Majors , Michael J. Pollard
- Director: Richard Donner
- Inclusion Information: Black actors, Female actors
- Studio: Paramount Pictures
- Genre: Comedy
- Run time: 101 minutes
- MPAA rating: PG-13
- MPAA explanation: Parental Guidance
- Last updated: September 29, 2023
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