Scrooged
Ghostbusters was an unexpected box office tsunami, mind-boggling to the point it took four years for Bill Murray to find a project more worthy his genius. Who ya’ gonna call? Charles Dickens, whose A Christmas Carol is arguably the most famous ghost story of all time. Ghostbuster vs Marley’s ghost. Get it? We open on a series of commercial parodies any one of which had more laugh potential. That’s about the level of imagination that went into this crass, self-indulgent showcase for its smug star. One guesses most of the film’s $32 million budget was squandered on celebrity cameos. Buddy Hackett, Robert Goulet, Miles Davis, John Houseman, etc. all appear just long enough for audiences to pick them out of the crowd, and vanish before contributing anything more to the proceedings than facial recognition. Dickens’ last-minute reversal that served Alastair Sim and other Ebeneezers so well crumbles under the weight of Murray’s sincere insincerity. Scrooged returns for one county-wide showing on November 29 at 7:00 pm. — Scott Marks