Movie Review: An American Carol
This is a reworking of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, with Michael Moore Malone standing in for Scrooge and the Fourth of July (Which Malone wants to shut down) standing for Christmas.
What follows I crossposted (in slightly modified form) over at Curmudgeonly and Skeptical, because I had earllier announced there my intention to go to the evening show specifically to pay full price, to put my money where I stand.
I went to an eight o’clock show. Good crowd at the ‘plex, but almost nobody in this auditorium. The laughs were half-hearted, forced even. The people there wanted to like it, wanted to laugh. We were hungry for the sentiments expressed.
But my god, it was dry and boring.
Unfortunately, it is at best clumsy, heavy handed preaching to the choir. There is nothing, nothing in this film that will explain its position to anyone that doesn’t already agree with it, much less convert them.
The patriotism was cloying. The family values were saccharine. The religious faith was flimsy.
Perhaps worst of all, the stabs at jihadism were clumsily wide of the mark, failing to acknowledge the very sincere fanaticism at work.
Go to the evening show at a big cineplex. Pay the full price. Buy popcorn and soda and hotdogs and candy.
Then watch another movie playing at the same time, because this one, I am very sorry to say, is a dog.
Two out of five stars. Sorry, folks. [scale adjusted for better resolution.]
[update -- additional reviews below the fold. Nobody agrees with me. Hey Hollywood: people are starving for this! Please, please, please, give us more!]
I do want to get this above the fold: By Hollywood standards, Zucker and co. are displaying career courage by daring to make this film.
An American Carol is laugh-out-loud funny in a lot of places, and it skewers every Lefty trope, meme, archetype, and shibboleth. It’s not Airplane!, but it has got the funny.
Except in one scene near the end.
John Voight plays George Washington (briefly) in the film. That part isn’t funny. I’m sure the critics will call it mawkish. The scene is not mawkish, and I won’t post a spoiler other than that.
I do agree that the Voight does a very good job here. The movie is not without its moments, and his scene is a somber high point.
Kevin’s also correct in that lefty talking points are eviscerated and strangled with their own entrails, and that’s all to the good. It’s just that those scenes are only funny if you already agree with them — and even then, there’s a kind of SNL clumsiness to them.
Hey, you want another really good Washington? See David Morse in HBO’s John Adams.
[update again]Bruce Webster at Still I Persist In Wondering:
David Zucker is brave. Not just because he gleefully mocks the Left (including Hollywood), but because he gleefully mocks radical Islamic terrorists as well. And he is very politically incorrect in how both the Left and radical Islamists are portrayed. When in the first few minutes of the movie you have suicide bomber jokes — not wry or ironic asides, but Airplane!-style, pushing-the-boundaries-of-taste jokes and pratfalls — you know you’re not in West LA anymore.
The actors who appear in this movie — Kevin Farley (as “Michael Morton”), Kelsey Grammer, Jon Voight, Leslie Nielsen and the rest — are likewise brave, especially in light of actual voiced blacklisting threats towards outspoken conservative actors.
Not all jokes in the film were drop-dead funny, but enough were — and the movie moves fast enough to get by the occasional miss or slow moment — to have kept us entertained throughout.
Careful; there’s a spoiler for the Washington scene.
Again, good point about the bravery here; it’s very real. It’s just…not that funny.
Absolutely, read the blacklisting link, which happens to talk about Voight himself being subjected to a modern liberal blacklist.
But I didn’t think AAC was all that funny. I’m sorry, what am I supposed to say?
From here on out, I’ll stop apologizing for my own lack of humor, and just point to the reviews, good or bad, as I find them.
Flopping Aces: “Slapsticking It To The Left“.
The movie itself is an “imperfect servant”. It definitely could have been polished up better. But the fact that it was so deeply pro-American and anti-zany leftists, had me feeling a bit emotional as the movie was winding down. As silly as the movie is, we clapped at the end of it. Its message of pro-U.S. military, pro-America flag-waving was foreign in a Hollywood film. It was refreshing; it connected and resonated in a way that nothing in recent memory has.
Applause in my theatre too; I should have said. I got there late, and did not see the previews; many reviewers are reporting that audiences booed a preview for Oliver Stone’s W.
Tags: An American Carol, Michael Moore