While many movie versions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol seek to follow the novel closely and recreate a slice of early Victorian England, Scrooged (1988) is set in the 1980s and speaks directly to that era. The hippies of the Summer of Love had become the Thirtysomething yuppies, who reigned supreme until the stock market crash on Black Monday (October 19, 1987) provided a symbolic end to the decade.

Frank Cross (Bill Murray) getting into the, um, spirit.

Scrooged seemingly sets out to answer the question, “How did we get from the Summer of Love to Black Monday?” Rather than Victorian England, Scrooged is set in 1980s New York, and instead of moneylender/speculator Ebenezer Scrooge, we have Frank Cross (Bill Murray) a hard-driven TV exec who’s willing to use shock tactics to gain ratings. The plot is generally familiar: A dead boss (partner) warns Cross that he will be visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve, who will convince him to change his ways. With Murray in the lead role, it is not surprising that this Christmas Carol is a comedy, albeit a black one. In 1988, Murray was best known for Caddyshack, Stripes, and Ghostbusters — Lost in Translation was still years in the future). And the movie is hilarious. Murray’s humor is as dry as ever and the many cameos (Lee Majors, Bobcat Goldthwait, David “Buster Pointdexter” Johansen, Carol Kane, Alfre Woodard, even Robert Mitchum) are excellent.

In addition to this shift from drama to comedy, the central feature of “Scrooge’s” transformation is changed. Frank Cross realizes that he should not have chosen career over the love of his life, Claire Phillips (Karen Allen), and familial relationships. Love and family are more important than career. And just in case you missed the message, the film ends with the song “Put a Little Love in Your Heart.”

This is a pretty big shift: In Dickens’ tale, Scrooge moves from a man only concerned with his own business dealings to one who believes “the welfare of mankind is [his] business,” and Belle (Claire in Scrooged) leaves Scrooge for good and ends up happily married to another man. The answer to the question the movie asks is clear: The 1980s got Gordon Gekko because many who came of age in the 1960s lost the spirit of the Summer of Love.

The purist in me doesn’t care for the changes. However, if we put Scrooged in its proper historical context, it becomes a revealing portrait of post-Black Monday America. That, and Bill Murray is pretty funny in it.

You can see Scrooged (1988, 101 minutes) at Coffee and (___) on Saturday, December 22 at 7:15pm.