In this modern take on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” Frank Cross (Bill Murray) is a wildly successful television executive whose cold ambition and curmudgeonly nature has driven away the love of his life, Claire Phillips (Karen Allen). But after firing a staff member, Eliot Loudermilk (Bobcat Goldthwait), on Christmas Eve, Frank is visited by a series of ghosts who give him a chance to re-evaluate his actions and right the wrongs of his past.

In the tradition of a classic “A Christmas Carol”, this film offers many lessons on the importance of giving and the cause and effect our choices have on others.

Margaret Rockland is as depressed as the ubiquitous Christmas carols are cheerful when she returns to the Washington DC suburb of her childhood for a reunion. The wild bunch she grew up with have settled into respectable family life. Adding insult to injury, her former boyfriend is engaged to the most bourgeois blonde on the East Coast. Margaret reacts by diving into a drinking and drugs marathon. With two remaining fellow souls, she roams the suburban no man’s land and ends up in an incomparable adventure with kidnapping, extortion, misunderstandings and clumsy violence as basic ingredients.

This Christmas the pupils of St Bernadette’s and their much-loved, madcap teacher Mr. Poppy are back for their biggest adventure yet involving fantastic flashmobs, excitable elves, Christmas carols and of course Archie the donkey! When their new teacher Mr. Shepherd loses his memory and forgets all about Christmas, as well as his fiancée Sophie and the whereabouts of the beloved Archie, it’s up to the pupils of St Bernadette’s to save the day. Led by the ever enthusiastic Mr Poppy, they embark on a Christmas journey like never before – but time is against them if they are to help Mr Shepherd get to New York in time for his magical yuletide wedding!

Caroline and Lloyd are a married couple constantly at each other’s throats, masters at crafting acid-tongued barbs at the other’s expense. Indeed, they are so obsessed with belittling each other that they never stop — not even at gunpoint. The gunman is Gus, a thief on the run from the police, who kidnaps the couple as an insurance policy, planning to use their home as a hideout. But their incessant bickering proves more than Gus bargained for, forcing him — for the sake of his own sanity — into the unenviable role of peacemaker. To make things even worse for Gus, he discovers that he has taken the couple hostage the night of their big Christmas party, and the guests are already on the way. Not wanting to leave Lloyd and Caroline unattended, Gus opts to attend the party, pretending to be the couple’s marriage counselor. This naturally leads to a series of comic confusions, as the hostage crisis and marital tensions head towards their inevitable conclusion.