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Bill Murray is hysterically funny (and admittedly spectacular) as Frank Cross, the president of a television network in the 1988 comedy Scrooged. Despite uncreative writing and subtle-as-a-jackhammer direction, Murray manages to cut quite the profound cinematic figure of Cross, a detestable, egotistical man who’s about as pleasant to be around as a tax auditor in December. Having gotten near the top of his profession at a relatively young age, Frank has wasted no time in openly and profanely professing his megalomania to his subordinates. He loves demeaning people – it stokes the internal fire that helps fuel a weak inner superiority complex – and does so with such ferocious élan that it’s no wonder he’s all but a literal terror to come in contact with. Yet, in a lot of ways, he’s irresistible to movie audiences, because Murray plays him with such utter and complete conviction, with so many subtle nuances of irony, that you find yourself responding to him on numerous emotional levels; he makes for the darndest, most despicably detestable Everyman ever to grace a saccharine, feel-good cinematic Christmas fable. When Cross mercilessly fires an employee on Christmas Eve, the only thing that makes him tingle with joy more is having his secretary call down to Accounting to stop the man's bonus; and a bit later, when in a rush to get to a humanitarian awards ceremony, he’s all but ecstatic over swindling a little old lady out of her cab on a cold night -- he even points up his accomplishment by flipping her the finger as the cab departs. Murray’s at the top of his game – he clues you into the humaneness lurking somewhere deep down inside this human monstrosity, minus the insufferable mawkishness that a genuinely naive actor might soil the proceedings with – and he provides the film with a lot more panache than the filmmakers know what to do with.

Scrooged is as uncouth and bombastic a comedy as ever projected onto the silver screen, and it’s little wonder that critics and audiences alike didn’t take to kindly to it during its theatrical release. The main reason for this, chiefly, is the indifferent handling of director Richard Donner, who proved a year before with the miraculous Lethal Weapon that he had all the makings of a first-rate filmmaker. But that was with the action genre, not comedy. Scene after scene comes off as overscaled and underjudged, as if the director were wading around in unfamiliar artistic waters too deep to get a proper toehold on. When the comedy was lightly stressed in Weapon (like, for instance: Mel Gibson’s insistent smoking in the police car; Danny Glover’s wiseacre comments over his wife’s pathetic cooking) it fused agreeably with the violent aspects of the goings-on; but in putting the comedy center stage in Scrooged, Donner proves himself as obtuse at setting up a gag as fellow maestro Brian De Palma did in Wise Guys and The Bonfire of the Vanities. The unsuccessful gags don’t just misfire -- they thud as loud as the ringing bells of a clock tower. With the big budget and lavish special effects, it should come as little surprise that filmmaking tact takes a backseat to sensationalism; so, keeping in mind the spectacular production design (Cross’ office interior is particularly stunning) and evocative cinematography by the great Michael Chapman (the lavish big-city exteriors have a glitzy tactility to them), it’s little wonder that we don't respond to the film as anything more than an exercise in style-over-coherence. Oh, Scrooged isn’t painful to sit through. The first-rate array of supporting performances are all one could ask for (even when Carol Kane pushes too hard with determined eccentricity as a spunky angel, there’s Murray’s real-life brother, John, appealingly playing his kind-hearted on-screen brother), and when the story lurches and threatens to keel over, it’s never unforgivably boring because there’s always something interesting (regardless of whether or not it’s organically relevant) going on in the center or periphery of the action.

Still, Bill Murray is best when playing an all-out, unredeemable bastard, and Donner isn’t enough of a character-oriented director to help the actor blend the character's newfound 'goodness' in with his other emotional levels like director Harold Ramis aided Murray with in 1993’s wonderful Groundhog Day. When Cross finally transforms into a caring human being, the strain definitely shows, and Murray (usually one of the most alert of performers) is simply unable to convince us of the transformation due to the sitcom-like character development -- it leaps forth rather than progressing fluidly; Murray suggests more valid humaneness at the onset when submerging it than blatantly revealing and showcasing it later on. Sure, he’s a joy when dictating his last-minute Christmas list to his secretary while downing highballs (the lucky recieptents getting either a towel or VCR), but when he wraps his arm around an impoverished inner-city child at the end while singing a carol, you can’t help but realize the filmmakers have totally misunderstood what makes Murray such a valuable commodity among his contemporaries: his uncanny ability to deliver a gag while, at the same time, skewering its implications with lyrical cynicism.


@Jack Sommersby, 2003

Not a holiday film worth reveling in.

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originally posted: 04/18/03 09:50:53
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