Review: An American Carol (PG-13)
Directed by David Zucker
Starring Kelsey Grammar, Kevin Farley
Runtime: 1 hour 23 minutes
Being a conservative in Hollywood is much like being a member of a certain other group that fears “coming out of the closet.” As such, An American Carol is somewhat of a coming out of the closet as it is a movie the ridicules Hollywood and liberal ideals, rather than celebrating them America’s the good guy, the military is the good guy.
While a noble cause – it is always better to have a wide variety of thought in the public discourse, this particular execution falls flat. That being said, it was worth seeing for a number of reasons, and I believe it will spark more of these films (and hopefully better).
David Zucker is well known for satire films such as Airplane! and the Naked Gun series. Leslie Nielsen even shows up in An American Carol (looking pretty near death). The problem is, this style of slapstick and random humor has seen its time, which has passed. Audiences that once rolled over laughing at people being slapped in the face don’t really exist outside of 3rd grade anymore.
If you saw Scary Movie 3, another Zucker production, you can see the same thing. So I blame half of this movie’s failure on this comedy style and the other half on a fairly mangled script. There’s no plot, but rather a series of skits and painful eye poking.
Chris Farley’s brother, Kevin Farley, plays Michael Malone, a Michael Moore-esque filmmaker who wants to abolish the 4th of July. He is visited by spirits (a la Dicken’s a Christmas Carol) who try to show him the true meaning of patriotism. A wide variety of Hollywood types (you’ll be quite surprised who) cameo and the story structure doesn’t hold together because of this. Some of the messaging is very good…and biting. But a lot of it will leave you scratching your head, rather than laughing.
It’s a short film, thank goodness. And you can tell the integrity of the writers truly trying to do something different. But for Conservatism to see a resurgence in popular media, it needs new styles and new ideas. Having the humor of The Office writers, for example. There is plenty of talent out there and I think it will happen. My hat is off to David Zucker (a former liberal Democrat and environmentalist) for attempting this. He opened the door to potentially more and better satire that is much deserved on the left, but this film isn’t the one.
