When you're a huge movie fan (as I'm trying to be) and you have children, one of the fun perks of parenthood is introducing your kids to movies that you love and giving them an overall look at pop culture outside of what is thrown at youngsters these days. (We do "family movie night" every Sunday where we watch a classic film...which then immediately becomes their favorite movie.) It's interesting to note the things that they've heard of and those which they haven't. For example, they have no idea who Bill Murray is, save for the fact that he provided the voice for the atrocious Garfield movies. For people my age, Murray is ubiquitous and dwells in the pantheon of movie comedy legends. When I think of Bill Murray, I think of someone who dominated the film world in the 80s. However, if you check his filmography, he only starred (as opposed to appeared in) four comedies in that decade; Stripes, Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters II, and Scrooged. Doesn't it seem like it should be more than that? Perhaps it was the pervasiveness of Ghostbusters which makes it feel as if Murray was everywhere. Given his presence, Murray could certainly open a movie, and that would explain the weird world of Scrooged.

Scrooged is a modern take on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (Although, for some reason, they never say A Christmas Carol here, always referring to Dickens' tale as "Scrooge".) Murray stars as Frank Cross, the president of IBC, a television network. Cross is a ruthless and joyless man, who is only concerned with material goods and Nielsen ratings. He berates his employees and treats his secretary, Grace Cooley (Alfre Woodard), like a servant. IBC is preparing a live broadcast of "Scrooge" and Cross will do anything to promote it. While working late on December 23rd, Cross is visited by the ghost of his former boss (John Forsythe), who warns him that he must change his wicked ways, and that he'll be visited by three ghosts. Shocked by this, Frank contacts his old girlfriend, Claire (Karen Allen), but in the light of day, he laughs the whole thing off. But, sure enough, on Christmas Eve, Cross meets The Ghost of Christmas Past (David Johansen), The Ghost of Christmas Present (Carol Kane), and The Ghost of Christmas Future. Can their visions help Frank to change?

OK, let's get one thing straight, Scrooged is a weird movie. It seemed strange in 1988 and it seems even weirder today. You look at this movie and think, "This was a tentpole holiday movie?" Yes, it was, and that's a testament to the star power of Bill Murray. But, what makes this movie strange? Well, at it's core, it is a pretty straight-forward adaptation of A Christmas Carol, and placing the "Scrooge" character in entertainment, as opposed to money lending is a genius move. From there, things get odd.

First of all, we have the movie's editing. Veteran director Richard Donner helmed Scrooged, and you would assume that someone with his experience would be able to put a movie together. However, Donner's only other attempt at a comedy feature film was The Toy and we all know how that went. Perhaps after years of making action movies, he didn't know how to time a comedy. There are long pauses here and shots which don't match. This become really apparent during The Ghost of Christmas Present sequence, which leads me to my next point. The fight between Bill Murray and Carol Kane is so weird and unfunny that it pulls the audience out of the movie. This sequence is marred with odd cuts, as if they worked in the editing room to try and make it work. How about the fact that instead of being lame and having a potentially chronic illness, the Tiny Tim character in Scrooged (played by Nicholas Phillips) has selective mutism. That doesn’t pack quite the same punch, does it? And then we have the finale. Having a sing-along in a major motion picture was a huge gamble...which doesn’t work. This just smacks of “We don’t know how to end this.”

Having said that, the movie does have its moments. The decidedly loose nature of the movie means that Murray is able to do his thing here and he certainly seems to be having a good time as the ruthless Cross. The funniest moments come when Frank tries to keep his cool as the ghosts take him across time. We get some classic Murray facial expressions here and some good one-liners. However, Scrooged may be the one Bill Murray comedy which doesn’t have any truly great quotable lines. Can you think of any? I just watched the movie and I can’t.

Sure, we get plenty of wacky movies today, but Scrooged comes across as an odd collision of a clever idea, a big star, and a corporate push to make a hit movie. It swings for the fences, cut comes up short in many ways. Still, you can’t go wrong with a Bill Murray comedy and even when the movie is baffling, it’s still humorous.

Scrooged contains way too many Murrays for its own good on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Paramount Home Entertainment. The film has been letterboxed at 1.85:1 and the Disc contains an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 36 Mbps. For a movie which is 23 years old, the image looks pretty good. It is sharp and clear, for the most part, showing on defects from the source material. Some of the darker scenes do show some fine grain, but otherwise, it’s clear. The image is never overly dark or bright and the colors look good, most notably reds. The Disc carries a DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 4.0 Mbps. The track provides clear dialogue and sound effects. I don’t know what kind of sound Scrooged had originally, but someone did a good job with this track. The subwoofer effects are nicely done during the Future scenes. The surround sound effects aren’t prominent, but when they do appear, they are effective. Stereo effects are nicely detailed and give a sense of things happening off-screen.

The lone extra on the Scrooged Blu-ray Disc is the THEATRICAL TRAILER for the film.