Scrooged

Now that Bill Murray has ascended to the highest realm of critical appreciation, perhaps it’s time to revisit Scrooged. The holiday comedy was lambasted for its cynicism in 1988, but that same quality makes it ripe for reappraisal now. In a modern twist on A Christmas Carol, Murray stars as a miserly TV executive who pours every ounce of his bitterness and contempt into a live adaptation of the Dickens story, which he envisions as a bloodless cash-in on the Christmas spirit. Everything changes one drunken evening when he’s visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future.

Updated 02/01/2010