“Scrooged” is an intriguing twist on the classic story “A Christmas Carol”. It’s like “Groundhog Day”, “A Christmas Carol” and “Beetlejuice” all mixed up together and while it shouldn’t work, it most certainly does. This is another good film by director Richard Donner (“The Goonies”, “Lethal Weapon”).

In this film, Bill Murray (“Groundhog Day”, “Ghostbusters”) plays cruel tv executive Frank Cross, who is forcing his staff to work around the clock so that he can make a live version of “A Christmas Carol”. He hopes it’ll be a smash hit but he’s about to face the same three types of ghosts that Ebenezer Scrooge had to deal with.

Bill Murray is fantastic here and he plays virtually the same character he did in “Groundhog Day”. He’s not laugh out loud funny here but I’m not sure if the movie is necessarily trying to be funny in that way. At times, the film has one wicked sense of humour. My favourite ghost in the film has to be the Ghost of Christmas Past (David Johansen) as he’s so unique and is nothing like the version I’m used to seeing in adaptations of the story. I also like Bobcat Goldthwait (“Police Academy 2”) as Cross’ employee, who finds himself without a job just before Christmas. He therefore goes mad.

The film is mean at times but to a degree, I think “A Christmas Carol” is meant to be. The film doesn’t mock the old story but instead, it presents a nice variation on story we all know well. “Scrooged” is a movie where I’m not sure if I was meant to laugh a lot or not but either way, I had a really good time with it. There are good performances, good special effects, a nice message in there and some real creativity with a story we repeatedly see done the same way.