Day 17: Scrooged (1988)
“No, you are metformin hcl 500mg metformin hcl weight loss a hallucination brought on by alcohol… Russian vodka poisoned by Chernobyl!”
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol has been remade a billion times in many different ways. In fact, you could argue that one of Hollywood’s biggest holiday traditions is to rush out another iteration of the redemptive tale just in time for Christmas. A Christmas Carol is one of my favorite stories. The structure is perfect and the lessons learned are universally relatable. Each version of the story has some kind of novel approach, hook, or gimmick.
With the 500mg metformin weight loss George C. Scott classic, there was an attempt to bring to life the novel as it was written. With The Muppet Christmas Carol (more on that later) you have the three M’s: music, Michael Caine, and muppets. Or take the most recent realization of the tale – Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol (check back tomorrow) – where state-of-the-art performance capture and stereoscopic 3D technology attempt to recapture the magic of the George C. Scott version and blend it with theme park ride affections. Regardless of how it’s told, the story of Ebenezer Scrooge forever remains timeless. Richard Donner’s Scrooged is a holiday highlight for me. Like every version there’s a gimmick, and Scrooged has three. It’s a full-blown comedy, it’s set in the present (circa-’88), and it stars Bill Murray.
If you grew up with any knowledge of ’80s comedies, then you’ll know that Murray is not only a staple of the decade but an icon of the genre. Admittedly, Murray can phone in performances on occasion, and any time he throws a little snark around Dr. Peter Venkman immediately jumps to mind, but the guy is funny – plain and simple. As cynical TV producer Frank Cross (a modern day Scrooge), Murray delivers a wonderfully sarcastic performance that ends up more heartwarming than one would expect from a Murray comedy, but stays traditional to the Dickens’ classic in that regard. Carol’s a story about a man who re-discovers what’s important in life after being haunted by three spirits that sojourn with him through his past, present, and future. Rarely do we get to see the modern equivalent of this story, and what better way to visualize cynicism than with television. The setting is perfect and that makes this specific approach to the tried-and-true classic a winner.
