In this modern day interpretation of A Christmas Carol Frank Cross is the youngest television president in history and it has gone to his head. As he plans the worlds largest live broadcast on Christmas Eve he is visited by the ghost of his old boss and warned he is being given a chance to change his ways and will be visited on Christmas Eve by three ghosts. Cross spends the next day being ferried through his past, present and future by ghosts and leading everyone in his life to start thinking the Christmas Eve broadcast has finally made him lose it.
Scrooged is hands down one of my favorite Christmas films, and a movie so funny that like Elf I can watch it any time of year. What makes this film so memorable is that it takes a story we all know so well and manages to combine that with what Bill Murray does best – bizarre comedy.
Frank Cross is a horrible man. He sends the people on his Christmas gift list either a towel or a VCR depending on if he likes them or not. He refuses to give his secretary a bonus. He fires an executive the day before Christmas Eve for disagreeing with him. He’s excited when an old woman has a heart attack from watching his Scrooged promo and it gets published by the media. Cross doesn’t care about anyone and everyone knows it. The slogan posted around his office is “Cross: a thing you nail people to”. Bill Murray is the perfect person to play Frank Cross because he can take all of the self-involved horribleness of Frank Cross and make them almost endearing. You still think Frank Cross is awful, but you laugh at him and get excited when he changes. And there is nothing like watching Murray do his thing on screen, he’s amazing.
You also have to love the ghosts in this film, the most memorable one for most people I talk to is the ghost of Christmas present played by Carol Kane. Kane is a SNL alum like Murray, and their comedy styles mesh very well, but that’s not what makes her character memorable. What makes Kane’s ghost memorable is that she is a hyper fairy in a tutu that beats the crud out of Frank. I don’t mean metaphorically, or emotionally, I mean that at one point she literally hits him with a toaster – and that’s just one thing she hits him with. Kane’s character and Cross spend most of their segment arguing like an old divorced couple and each argument culminates in violence to get Frank magically transported to the next scene he needs to see.
I know the holiday season is wrapping to a close and you may not feel like watching a Dicken’s tale during the march to Valentine’s Day, but I do hope that at some point before Christmas Day rolls around again you will find this film and watch it if you haven’t seen it before.
Director: Richard Donner
Writers: Mitch Glazer & Michael O’Donoghue
Frank Cross: Bill Murray
Claire Phillips: Karen Allen
Lew Hayward: John Forsythe
Brice Cummings: John Golver
Eliot Loudermilk: Bobcat Goldwait
Ghost of Christmas Past: David Johansen
Ghost of Christmas Present: Carol Kane
Preston Rhinelander: Robert Mitchum
Grace: Alfre Woodard
Scrooge: Buddy Hackett
Frank Cross: Do you think I'm way off-base here?
Elliot: Yes. You're, well, you're a tad off-base, sir. That thing looked like The Manson Family Christmas Special.
Showing posts with label scrooged. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scrooged. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Four Christmases
The holiday movie season has begun. This means two things – 1: it’s Oscar season so we’ll get Oscar-bait, 2: we are going to be bombarded with holiday themed movies. Four Christmases is not Oscar-bait but one of the standard Christmas fare that comes out between Thanksgiving and New Years; movies that are typically cheapish to make, star cute actors and are designed to capitalize on the few brief weeks of holiday cheer. Most holiday movies are not really that good like Surviving Christmas (which I dare you to remember who stars in that one without using IMDB) or Jingle All the Way there are always exceptions to that rule – movies like Elf, Christmas Vacation and Scrooged are among a few of my most enjoyed comedies and they are Christmas films. Four Christmases is not a great Christmas movie, but it is a lot better than you would expect it to be.
If you’ve seen the trailer for Four Christmases you can guess every plot point in the film – Brad & Kate can’t stand their families and would rather be anywhere else for the holidays. As a result they make an elaborate lie every holiday season that gets them out of going while they sneak off to an exotic destination and relax in peace, the hitch is that their flight gets canceled and they get caught at the airport by a live TV broadcast which all t heir relatives see so they are roped into seeing everyone they were trying to avoid.
Four Christmases suffers because the plot hinges on fog – literally; fog grounds their plane and though it obviously burns off they couple continues to make the rounds with their relatives. If you think too hard about the monologues delivered by both Brad and Kate at the beginning of the film you will realize that actually sticking with their copout and visiting their families once the fog lifts seems really out of character; they are painted as two people that wouldn’t care enough to keep up the charade with as miserable a time as they are having.
However, the reason that the film overcomes this fault is the unexpected chemistry between Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon. As Brad and Kate they are an adorable couple and stand so far apart from their families that you do see them as aliens in a foreign land when they are forced to interact. To the tribute of the screenwriter the situations they are put in are believable enough that you can empathize with them – not because Brad’s brother is a UFC fighter who wants to beat him up but because we all have that embarrassing relation that we love but cannot understand no matter how hard we try.
While most of you will just shrug this off to my obsession with Iron Man, my absolute favorite character was Brad’s brother Denver played by Jon Favreau. I have been a fan of Favreau’s since I first saw Swingers and I have to say that seeing him muscled, tattooed and with a mohawk was a memorable experience. Knowing that he and Vaughn have a great friendship (hence the supporting role in Vaughn’s picture) also makes the relationship between Denver and Brad funnier to me.
Four Christmases is not one of the best holiday movies I have ever seen, but it is funny, fresh and genuine. All things considered it’ll probably be one of the better Christmas movies this season.
Director: Seth Gordon
Writers: Matt Allen, Caleb Wilson, John Lucas & Scott Moore
Brad: Vince Vaughn
Kate: Reese Witherspoon
Howard: Robert Duvall
Paula: Sissy Spacek
Creighton: Jon Voight
Denver: Jon Favreau
Marilyn: Mary Steenburgen
Pastor Phil: Dwight Yoakam
Dallas: Tim McGraw
Courtney: Kristin Chenoweth
If you’ve seen the trailer for Four Christmases you can guess every plot point in the film – Brad & Kate can’t stand their families and would rather be anywhere else for the holidays. As a result they make an elaborate lie every holiday season that gets them out of going while they sneak off to an exotic destination and relax in peace, the hitch is that their flight gets canceled and they get caught at the airport by a live TV broadcast which all t heir relatives see so they are roped into seeing everyone they were trying to avoid.
Four Christmases suffers because the plot hinges on fog – literally; fog grounds their plane and though it obviously burns off they couple continues to make the rounds with their relatives. If you think too hard about the monologues delivered by both Brad and Kate at the beginning of the film you will realize that actually sticking with their copout and visiting their families once the fog lifts seems really out of character; they are painted as two people that wouldn’t care enough to keep up the charade with as miserable a time as they are having.
However, the reason that the film overcomes this fault is the unexpected chemistry between Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon. As Brad and Kate they are an adorable couple and stand so far apart from their families that you do see them as aliens in a foreign land when they are forced to interact. To the tribute of the screenwriter the situations they are put in are believable enough that you can empathize with them – not because Brad’s brother is a UFC fighter who wants to beat him up but because we all have that embarrassing relation that we love but cannot understand no matter how hard we try.
While most of you will just shrug this off to my obsession with Iron Man, my absolute favorite character was Brad’s brother Denver played by Jon Favreau. I have been a fan of Favreau’s since I first saw Swingers and I have to say that seeing him muscled, tattooed and with a mohawk was a memorable experience. Knowing that he and Vaughn have a great friendship (hence the supporting role in Vaughn’s picture) also makes the relationship between Denver and Brad funnier to me.
Four Christmases is not one of the best holiday movies I have ever seen, but it is funny, fresh and genuine. All things considered it’ll probably be one of the better Christmas movies this season.
Director: Seth Gordon
Writers: Matt Allen, Caleb Wilson, John Lucas & Scott Moore
Brad: Vince Vaughn
Kate: Reese Witherspoon
Howard: Robert Duvall
Paula: Sissy Spacek
Creighton: Jon Voight
Denver: Jon Favreau
Marilyn: Mary Steenburgen
Pastor Phil: Dwight Yoakam
Dallas: Tim McGraw
Courtney: Kristin Chenoweth
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