Scrooged

Tiny bubbles…

(1988) Comedy (Paramount) Bill Murray, Karen Allen, John Forsythe, John Glover, Bobcat Goldthwait, David Johansen, Carol Kane, Robert Mitchum, Michael J. Pollard, Alfre Woodard, Nicholas Phillips, Mabel King, Jamie Farr, Robert Goulet, John Houseman, Buddy Hackett, Lee Majors, Brian Doyle-Murray. Directed by Richard Donner

 

Some Christmas tales are so timeless, so meaningful that they can survive being twisted, pulled, yanked out of shape and modified into something quite different and still be meaningful and timeless.

Frank Cross (Murray) is the programming VP at the IBS network and he’s the youngest in the industry. He’s the golden boy, the one who has the eye of network head Preston Rhinelander (Mitchum). It’s Christmastime and Cross has an ace up his sleeve for the Yule season – a live broadcast of Scrooge from various locations, with Buddy Hackett as Scrooge, John Houseman narrating and Mary Lou Retton as Tiny Tim. God bless us, every one.

The people who work around Frank could use all the blessings they can manage. Frank is a world-class a-hole with a mean streak wider than the Long Island Expressway. This live show is crucial to his career; if it succeeds he is on the fast track to Rhinelander’s job. If it fails, he’s on the fast track to unemployment, where he has already put nebbish assistant Eliot Loudermilk (Goldthwait). He tries to keep his long-suffering assistant Grace Cooley (Woodard) working late, preventing her from taking her mute son Calvin (Phillips) to a needed doctor’s appointment.

But if you think Frank is callous in his professional life, you should see his personal life. He spurns his brother Earl’s (Doyle-Murray) invitation to dinner. He is as alone as alone can be. That wasn’t always the case. He was once deeply in love with the pretty community activist Claire Phillips (Allen) but that was from a long time ago. He’s barely thought about her over the years…well, that’s what he’d have you think anyway.

Frank is on a one-way trip to the hot seat but there are those who think he has something inside him worth saving – one being his mentor Lew Hayward (Forsythe), who pays Frank a visit on Christmas eve to try and reason with him. Never mind that Lew’s been dead for years; he’s really got Frank’s best interests at heart. He sure doesn’t want his protégé to end up like him – a rotting corpse doomed to walk the earth for eternity. To help the reluctant Frank along, Lew’s sending three ghosts to show him the way – the Ghost of Christmas Past (Johansen), the Ghost of Christmas Present (Kane) and…you get the picture.

This was a much ballyhooed remake of the Dickens classic that Murray, who had last tasted success with Ghostbusters four years earlier, had his imprint all over. SNL compatriots Michael O’Donoghue and Mitch Glaser co-wrote it and many of Murray’s cronies from SNL and from his other movies, as well as all of his brothers, were in the film. The film is very much set around Murray and his style of humor, so if you don’t like him much you’re not going to find a lot of reasons to see the film.

Still, if you do like him, this is one of his most iconic performances, one that will live with most of his classic performances in Stripes and the aforementioned Ghostbusters. The movie didn’t resonate with the critics very much – at the movie’s conclusion, Murray delivers a speech about the true meaning of Christmas which some felt was treacly and not heartfelt (although I beg to differ).

The ghosts are all amazing and fun, particularly Kane who beats the snot out of Murray (in one scene she pulled his lip so hard that filming had to be halted for several days while he recovered). The special effects are fun and if they are a little dated by modern standards (the movie will turn 25 next year) they still hold up pretty well.

The movie remains if not a Christmas classic at least a Christmas perennial. It runs regularly on cable this time of year and is easily available on streaming or for rent. It is perhaps less serious than most other Christmas movies but it has edgier laughs and that’s certainly worth something.

WHY RENT THIS: Kane, Forsythe and Johansen make some terrific ghosts.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Seems like an overly long SNL skit at times.

FAMILY VALUES:  There are a few scary images and some bad language. A little rude humor to tide you over as well.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The Tiny Tim-like character Calvin Cooley was named for former President Calvin Coolidge who was known for being taciturn.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $60.3M on an unknown production budget; in its time the movie was a big box office disappointment.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Fred Claus

FINAL RATING: 7/10

NEXT: The Holly and the Quill continues!

MacGruber

"I'm Hutch. So where's Starsky?"

(2010) Comedy (Rogue) Will Forte, Val Kilmer, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillippe, Powers Boothe, Maya Rudolph, Rhys Coiro, Andy Mackenzie, Jasper Cole, Timothy V. Murphy, Kevin Skousen, Jimmy G. Geisler, Chris Jericho, Mark Henry, MVP, The Great Khali, Kane, The Big Show.  Directed by Jorma Taccone

When the world needs saving, a hero must rise. Sometimes, when there are no heroes available, you must make do with what you’ve got.

MacGruber (Forte) is a former Navy SEAL, Army Ranger and all-around go-to guy when the world is threatened. However, after the murder of his fiancée by the notorious bad guy Dieter von Cunth (Kilmer), he has retreated to a monastery where he has resided the past fifteen years.

But von Cunth has reared his ugly head again and has captured a nuclear weapon which he is threatening to detonate in our nation’s capital. Only one man can stop him – and that’s MacGruber. Colonel Faith (Boothe) dispatches gung ho Lt. Dixon Piper (Phillippe) to fetch him and once MacGruber learns that von Cunth is involved, he’s all in.

MacGruber assembles a crack tam of operatives but accidentally gets them all killed, so he must settle for Piper and Vicky St. Elmo (Wiig), a former superspy who has turned lounge singer in hopes of forgetting her troubled past and the torch she holds for MacGruber, a torch still burning brightly.

However, as each attempt to foil the plot fails miserably, it’s beginning to look more and more like Washington is toast. MacGruber will have to find that inner hero – or else millions of lives may be snuffed out.

This started life as a series of five-minute SNL sketches that spoofed the old 1980s action series “MacGyver,” which was once a cultural touchstone with a hero that was able to extricate himself with odd household items. Kind of like the Science Guy meets a gun-phobic James Bond (MacGyver hated guns and never used ‘em) but in the last 20 years, the show has fallen out of favor. Younger viewers of SNL could be excused if they didn’t get the initial references.

Taccone, like Forte Wiig and Rudolph, also got his start on SNL doing short films (although not the MacGruber ones). There is a sense that the movie is padded; several jokes are repeated more than once, like a bit about a celery stalk in the buttocks (don’t ask). It wasn’t funny the first time and it wasn’t funny any of the following times either. Nobody ever said repetition was the soul of wit.

Forte is ok as MacGruber; the hair, flannel shirt and vest are pure 80s kitsch. It’s not the best role in the world to tackle – spoofs don’t really offer a whole lot of acting opportunities to be blunt. Still, Forte is likable enough even though MacGruber is an idiot; that’s kind of the down side of movies like this – being an idiot is sustainable only so long.

I am a big Powers Boothe fan and it was nice to see him in a role on the big screen once again, even in a movie like this. Ditto for Kilmer who was once one of the most promising leads in Hollywood but has made some poor role choices and has mostly been relegating to direct-to-home video schlock of late.

There are some action sequences straight out of the 80s action movie playbook, nothing to write home about but on the other hand nothing that makes you groan out loud either. You’re not going to be disappointed but you aren’t going to be doing much fist-pumping either.

There are those who love this kind of stuff and sure, there were enough jokes that worked that allowed me to write a review instead of writing it off. However there aren’t enough to give it much of a recommendation beyond to those who love raunchy spoofs – and this is plenty raunchy, believe you me.

So definitely an acquired taste – but not a taste I’ve acquired, so take my low rating with a grain of salt. Wiig would do so much better in this year’s Bridesmaids and Kilmer was better in movies like Real Genius.  Unfortunately, this isn’t as good as either of those movies no matter how you slice it. Even MacGyver couldn’t figure a way out of that one.

WHY RENT THIS: Forte captures the 80s action vibe nicely. Always good to see Boothe on the big screen.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: An SNL skit padded out to feature length. Just not funny enough to sustain a full length feature. 

FAMILY VALUES: Some of the material is a bit crude, there’s some violence, a bit of nudity, some sexuality and a bit of foul language.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: There are six active (at the time of filming) WWE wrestlers in the cast, the most ever in a single film.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: There’s a gag reel and not much else.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $9.3M on a $10M production budget; the movie was a flop.

FINAL RATING: 4/10

TOMORROW: Incendies