Cross is a thoroughly miserable wretch, played by Murray in a thoroughly miserable mood. What seems to be missing are the lightness and good cheer that lurk beneath the surface of most Murray performances. He’s often gruff in his movies, but in a way that lets you know he’s just kidding. This time, he doesn’t seem to be kidding.
Murray’s ill humor affects the chemistry of scene after scene, introducing a kind of undertow. When he shouts at people, he doesn’t add a little spin of self-mocking exaggeration, so that we know to laugh. He seems to be really shouting. And the other actors look as if they really feel shouted at.
During the course of “Scrooged,” the TV executive experiences his own version of the events that haunted Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Cross is visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, and shown how miserable he really is, and how unhappy he has made everyone else.
The Bob Cratchit of his story is his long-suffering secretary, Grace Cooley (Alfre Woodard). Her son, the Tiny Tim character, is old enough to speak, but has never opened his mouth. Cross gives the secretary a bath towel for Christmas, but when he is taken by a ghost to look in through the window of her household, he realizes how much happiness is missing from his life.
Meanwhile, there is trouble for Cross on the professional front. The chief executive officer of the network (Robert Mitchum) has lost confidence in him, and brought in a brash outsider (John Glover) to “lend a hand.” Cross fears that his job is threatened, especially since the Mitchum character seems to have gone off the deep end. (“Do you realize,” the CEO asks his underling, “that there is increasing evidence that dogs and cats watch television?”) The fear of job loss and the lessons from the Christmas ghosts result in a moral transformation for Cross, and in the final scenes the repentant TV executive barges onto the set of the live production of “Scrooge” and testifies to his change of heart.
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