Scrooged (released in 1988) - Christmas ghosts starring Bill Murray, Karen Allen, Bobcat Goldthwait, and John Forsythe

Ebenezer by another name: Frank Cross, Victorian era Britain: New York City. Directed by Richard Donner (The Omen), Scrooged was a 1988 Christmas offering for the holidays - peace, hope, love, joy and “bah! Humbug!”  The contemporization of a beloved classic, in a manner although surreal, is commendable. However, the movie is better suited to older audiences, given the contentious nature of some scenes in the film.
Frank Cross (played by Bill Murray) is a dissolute and sour television executive at IBC TV Network. He is  hell bent on resorting to any means so long as the ratings and moolah are raked in - despite the fact that he has a modestly burgeoning bank account, he’s hungry for more … and even more. He even harbors almost misanthropic views with regard to the people around him - costing him his family – his brother James(played by John Murray) and the love of his life, Claire (played by Karen Allen).
It is this strange, deeply embedded streak that leads him to get the staff at the to work through Christmas Eve - wanting them to stage a live broadcast of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. He gleefully hatches this evil plot to ensure that the Holiday is ruined and his coffers are brimming. At the receiving end of his constant derision is Grace Cooley (played by Alfre Woodward), the hardworking mother of Calvin, who is mute; much to her consternation and frustration she has to neglect the child and her family because she is so overburdened by work. A disastrous TV commercial produced by Frank causes an old lady’s death, and when his loyal sidekick Eliot Loudermilk (Bobcat Goldthwait) hesitatingly offers his opinion - he is dismissed from work on Christmas Eve.




Unfortunately for Frank, Christmas has something planned for him - a visit from the Ghosts of past Christmases. The first visitation is by Lew Hayward (played by John Forsythe), the spirit of his dead mentor,  the past, present and future- will visit him; this obviously psyches him out. Matters worsen when Cross is informed by his boss Preston Rhinelander (Robert Mitchum) that he will be assisted by a younger, dynamic assistant Brice Cummings (John Glover), an over smart yuppie clearly out to sabotage Frank’s job.
We get a glimpse of how Cross became the man he is, as the Ghost of Christmas Past (David Johansen) meets him as a New York cabbie. The two go back in time to the year 1955 when Frank was a kid and through to the moment in his life when he gets his first break at a TV station in 1969, up until the year 1971, when he chooses his career over Claire. The Ghost of Christmas Present (Carol Kane) likes to bonk Frank on the face with a toaster oven, she offers him a glimpse of the sad life Grace has and how James, (whose Christmas invite he rejected) despite his unkindness, misses him.
Angered and pained after his unfair dismissal, Eliot Loudermilk, former employee at IBC TV Network, storms Frank’s office in an attempt to kill him. The Ghost of Christmas Future - headless, caped and with a TV screen in place of its face - shows him his lonely future, when it would send right to the grave after a grilling in the crematorium - his funeral attended only by James, whilst Claire’s heart turns to stone, just like his, and poor Calvin ends up in a mental health facility. We have an idea how the film would end - and so, all’s well, eventually.

All I Want for Christmas (release in 1991) - starring Lauren Bacall, Thora Birch and Ethan Randall and directed by Robert Lieberman

'All I want For Christmas' is like many movies put together and finding nothing of a story in it. You have scheming Kids from The Parent Trap (thank god they are not twins), Good Santa from “Miracle at 34th street” and divorced mom and Dad from many other movies. So you have the kids trying to reunite Mom and Dad with the help of a department store Santa and a pet mouse. Directed by Robert Lieberman, it stars Thora Birch, Ethan Embry, Lauren Bacall in the main roles along with a assemble cast.
Ethan and Hallie O' Fallon live in a Manhattan Mansion with their mother and grandmother. Both their Mom and Dad are divorced as Mom does not approve of Dad opening a diner. Mom starts seeing creepy Tony Boer (or is it Bore, one never knows) who is hated unanimously by the siblings. Hallie voices her one wish to the department store Santa, to get their Mom and Dad to be reunited for Christmas. So comes the enormous planning of Operation reunification. Step one is to lock Mom's boyfriend in an ice-cream truck which takes him far away to the land where ice creams are made. But are Manhattan ice cream truck drivers taken in to confidence that they pretend not to listen to the loud bangings the poor guy makes!! Mom thinks that she is stood up and break up with him. Step two happens as Hallie feigns illness at Dad's diner to get mom over.



As the things move in one after another there are minor things happening like Ethan falling for a nice girl who helps him and the maid going in to labor on the kitchen floor. You also have many moments of Grandmother, grand daughter bonding over songs which must be avoided for you mental health. Lauren Bacall plays the Grand-mom who was supposedly the Dame of Broadway and thus you wonder the kind of taste people have to watch her. The ending is a real scorcher, with kids walking in, the maid in the throes of child birth, ambulances and other sirens blaring and the boyfriend who has been locked in the ice cream truck running in. So Mom takes one look at the deranged man who raves against the injustice done by her kids and breaks up with him. With Boer cleared out both Mom and Dad reunite. Well there is the appearance of the Santa coming home with Snowball, the pet hamster completing the happy family.
The movie is one of most rehashed ones of the century. There is nothing in this family comedy which would make it a Christmas treat. Ethan Embry and Thora Birch play the roles of the cutesy kids to the book. The adults are typical comic book characters with no depth in their roles. The Mom and Dad are rich and still love lorn, the boyfriend is creepy to the core and the Grand-mom ditsy as you can get. It just does not happen in real world with human's who have real feelings. Sugary to the core this movie is capable of making you a diabetic. So beware!!!