Why Scrooged remains the ulti­mate anti-Christ­mas film

Thir­ty years ago, you’d have been for­giv­en for think­ing of Scrooged as lit­tle more than a stan­dard-issue Christ­mas turkey. The pro­duc­tion itself had been fraught with ten­sion – most­ly between Bill Mur­ray and direc­tor Richard Don­ner, whose inter­pre­ta­tions of the script dif­fered wild­ly. The crit­ics were ambiva­lent at best, with some of the film’s harsh­er detrac­tors describ­ing it as ​“dis­qui­et­ing, unset­tling” and ​“appalling­ly unfun­ny”. Even a rel­a­tive­ly strong box office per­for­mance couldn’t make up for a deeply mis­judged release date – its late Novem­ber open­ing meant that, by the time Christ­mas actu­al­ly came around, Scrooged had already been forgotten.

Yet today the film sur­vives as some­thing of a cult sea­son­al favourite. A few years ago Empire and Time Out placed it 7^th and 12^th respec­tive­ly on their lists of the best Christ­mas films, while USA Today, the paper whose orig­i­nal review called the film a ​“mon­u­men­tal mess”, pub­lished a piece in 2013 implor­ing read­ers to give Scrooged anoth­er chance. And they have: vis­it any pop­u­lar audi­ence review site and you’ll find its users express­ing no small amount of affec­tion for the film. So what’s changed since the film’s orig­i­nal release?

The rea­sons for Scrooged’s last­ing appeal extend­ed far beyond the endur­ing charis­ma of its star. It may be an ​’80s movie for bet­ter and for worse, but its mes­sage res­onates as much today as it did then – per­haps even more so. It tells the sto­ry of a pompous, cru­el net­work exec­u­tive who forces his employ­ees to work long hours through the hol­i­days, fires peo­ple on a whim and obsess­es over things like view­ing fig­ures and audi­ence engagement.

Yes, much of this time­less­ness can be attrib­uted to the pow­er of ​‘A Christ­mas Car­ol’ itself, but cer­tain aspects of Scrooged nonethe­less remain rel­e­vant in a way that Charles Dick­ens’ orig­i­nal tale (under­stand­ably) hasn’t. Frank Cross is a mon­ster of the mod­ern age; a man whose par­tic­u­lar brand of abuse and exploita­tion – his con­stant need to make things big and bet­ter and shinier, and damn the hurt it caus­es – will be imme­di­ate­ly recog­nis­able to put-upon work­ers in 2018, and espe­cial­ly those who work in media or tech.

Nei­ther can the impact of Scrooged’s tone be under­stat­ed in pin­ning down its allure to 21^st cen­tu­ry view­ers. The film ini­tial­ly drew crit­i­cism for its bit­ter and sar­don­ic inter­pre­ta­tion of a genre which usu­al­ly demon­strat­ed noth­ing less than total earnest­ness and whole-heart­ed joy. In many ways, Scrooged is a Christ­mas film for peo­ple who hate Christ­mas films. The world it por­trays is rife with cyn­i­cism: cal­lous media exec­u­tives rehash old sto­ries to death, belea­guered work­ers turn to mur­der to avenge their fir­ings and the cru­ellest of men eas­i­ly redeem them­selves of their crimes by lead­ing sin­ga­longs on live television.

The film’s few gen­uine attempts at show­ing any Christ­mas good­will are per­func­to­ry and snide. But in yield­ing to its own acid­i­ty, Scrooged acci­den­tal­ly would up being decades ahead of its time. We live in an age of anti-Christ­mas songs and exis­ten­tial dread and sweaters worn iron­i­cal­ly. Now more than ever, audi­ences are clam­our­ing for a Christ­mas film touched by a lit­tle dark­ness – one in which Bob­cat Goldth­wait chas­es Bill Mur­ray around an office with a shot­gun, perhaps.

Of course, Scrooged is essen­tial­ly an exer­cise in cyn­i­cal com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion. It was an unnec­es­sary reboot of a clas­sic sto­ry which crit­i­cised unnec­es­sary reboots of clas­sic sto­ries, and seemed to dis­trust the appeal of Christ­mas itself so much that it tried to draw in the crowds by mak­ing a ten­u­ous link between Charles Dick­ens and Ghost­busters. Some­how, though, it stum­bled into a per­fect storm which car­ried it into the hearts and minds of con­tem­po­rary audi­ences. It may not have been inten­tion­al on the part of the film­mak­ers, but Scrooged’s deft choice of lead, acer­bic tone and last­ing the­mat­ic quirks has made it the per­fect Christ­mas film for the mod­ern era.