Review of An American Carol (2008) by Robin W — 10 Dec 2009

The fact that David Zucker, one of the men behind such comedy classics as "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun", was relegated to doing crappy "Scary Movie" sequels may seem like a sad enough fall from grace, but that's nothing compared to his decision to use a so-called "comedy" as an anti-liberal propaganda piece.

Doing a modern variation of "A Christmas Carol" with a Michael Moore clone as Scrooge isn't a bad idea in theory and it wouldn't even matter what the viewer's political affiliation was if the movie were actually funny or clever; however, even the most hardcore right-wing conservative has to acknowledge that as a comedy, "An American Carol" absolutely sucks! The old formula of the Zucker brothers was to throw every gag they could think into their filmsl, so that even if one didn't work, the viewer wouldn't have to wait very long to laugh again; David Zucker's formula this time is to present a bunch of gags that fall flat, and follow them up with a preachy sermon endorsing his own political agenda.

As a perfect example of what's wrong with the film: if Bill O'Reilly were brought in for a cameo where he poked fun of his own controversial image, the movie would work a satire; when Bill O'Reilly is brought in for a cameo to act as the voice of reason and accuse liberals of distorting the truth, like he is here, the movie winds up becoming the very thing it's supposed to be poking fun of and crosses the line into self-parody.