Scrooged

Scrooged (1988) — watch online on iFILM, Richard Donner's comedy reworking of Dickens set inside the cutthroat world of 1980s New York television. Bill Murray plays Frank Cross, a network president who fires a staff member on Christmas Eve for blinking at the wrong moment and greenlit a live holiday special featuring attack cats. Frank is efficient, cheerless, and has not spoken to his brother in years.

That night, three visitors arrive. David Johansen plays the Ghost of Christmas Past as a New York cabdriver who drives like he's already dead. Carol Kane's version of Christmas Present has no patience for Frank's self-pity and makes her point physically. The third ghost says nothing at all. In between the hauntings, Frank has to account for what he did with Claire, played by Karen Allen — the woman he walked away from when the promotions started coming.

Donner and Murray kept the structure of A Christmas Carol intact and wrapped it in sharp satire of broadcast television. Stream Scrooged (1988) on iFILM.