Splice Advent Calender 2009: Day 2

Right, one of the things I'm looking to do for the advent calender is have a look at some Xmas films for you to watch on the big day, think it's someone's birthday or something. But I'm taking a "Bah Humbug" approach to Xmas films and so I'm rating them by how inappropriate they are to watch with your family, thus if you slap it on you'll get some bloody peace.

First up is an obvious "Bah Humbuggy" film, Scrooged starring Bill Murray as Bill Murray in a modern, well 80's, take on Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It's a story done so many times that they've now taken to doing it in 3D to make it look fresh.

So why is Scrooged an obvious choice? Well it opens with this:



Pretty humbuggy, eh? It's also quite gross featuring Marley's ghost as a rotting corpse who dispenses of the golfball that killed him through a flap in his head, a drink with accompanying eyeball and David Johansen's face. Whoever had the idea to get the lead singer of the New York Dolls to play the Ghost of Christmas Past really wanted your kids to have nightmares!

So it's a perfect choice to get rid of your family for the rest of the day isn't it? Well, no. This being a take on The Christmas Carol means that for all the ick factor it's also about someone finding the "spirit of Christmas" which to me is whiskey. Sadly that's not the conclusion of the tale, it's about loving each other or something:



Yeah, I know. It's a great speech and a bloody brilliant song. Plus Murray at his Murrayist. In any other context this would be fantastic, but not here. This scene proves that for all its Humbuggery exterior Scrooged is far too nice and your family will ultimately be brought together by it.

So Scrooged fails as a "Bah Humbug" Christmas movie. And it was so close too.