Scrooged Review

Messages: Frank learns some valuable lessons about what is important in life. The humor focuses on the shallowness, greed, and sensation of commercial television.

Role models: Frank Cross/Ebeneezer Scrooge does indeed revert to being a nice guy, regretful of the bad choices he's made. Minorities are represented by Frank's hardworking black secretary (and her mute son) among the stand-ins for Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim.

Violence: Cartoonish gun violence, as a disgruntled, drunken employee goes crazy with a rifle. Frank shoots a spirit, causing puffs of dust and mice to exit the wounds. Machine-gun bullets, incendiaries, and explosions at the North Pole, in a parody of an action-hero Christmas show. One rotting, zombie-style ghost with detachable eyes and other body parts, including an arm that snaps off creakily. Frank is kicked in the crotch, tossed around, dropped out a window, and generally bullied by ghosts. Peripheral characters hit by falling props and stage sets. In hallucinatory visions a man catches fire. Another character is found frozen to death.

Sex: Non-explicit flashback scene of heroine Clair in a bathtub, with the attendant revelation that she and Frank lived together (and discuss the Kama Sutra together) without benefit of marriage. A busty beauty on a Christmas TV show, with comments about being able to see her nipples. Reference to prostitution, AKA "paying for women," and a double-entendre gag about "beaver." A very mild homosexual innuendo.

Language: "Damn," "goddamned," "bitch," "hell," the s-word, "butt," "bastard."

Consumerism: Tab soda drink shown. Real-life products and entertainment icons mentioned, including Ginzu knives, Ovaltine, The Six Million Dollar Man, "Little House on the Prairie," "Gilligan's Island," etc.

Drinking, drugs and smoking: Alcohol in abundance, in restaurants and at banquets. A ghost cabbie drinks and drives. Heavy executive-boardroom drinking (on which Frank blames a lot of his ghost visions). Mention of drug problems and cigarette smoking.