I like Bill Murray. I should have had more interest in seeing this, but something about the box art always put me off. But I wanted to watch something, and I wasn’t in the mood for horror, so…
It’s good. It’s really good. But it’s not something I would return to for the holidays. This is a peculiar problem, since it should be some really solid holiday fare. Bill Murray is as good as ever. He even gets some of his trademark singing in at the end.
What makes it hard to handle as a holiday movie is that it’s probably one of the darkest adaptations of A Christmas Carol that I’ve ever seen. Part of this might be because the story has been transplanted into modern times (yes, most adaptations of the story made for TV have transplanted it, but they also usually play it as a straight comedy. This is mostly played as a comedy, but there are some really dark things - like a frozen dead guy in the sewer.).
Carol Kane, who I usually really love, is in a very manic part, and she mostly spends her time on screen pushing Bill Murray around. It’s entertaining, but it feels like they could have gotten nearly anyone for that part.
Even though most of the movie is so much more potent than the other adaptations I’ve seen, Murray’s transformation at the end isn’t handled quite right. He’s scared straight by the vision of his corpse being burned up, but he doesn’t seem to be distressed by his legacy. The result is that he jumps a little too quickly into being a good person.
However, he does deliver a nice talk at the end that expresses a good philosophy of positivity. I’m also really impressed with how well the handled the equivalent part for Tiny Tim. It was obvious from the start, but it still paid out really well.
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