Review of An American Carol (2008) by Christopher S — 27 Nov 2009

'An American Carol' is a retelling of the Charles Dickins classic fable A Christmas Carol but this time, instead of an old, greedy miser named Ebenzer Scrooge being visited by a group of spirits, exploring the meaning of Christmas, we get an anti-American filmmaker named Michael Malone (played by Kevin Farley) being visited by the spirits of 3 American heroes, presidents John F. Kennedy (Chriss Anglin), George Washington (Jon Voight) and General George Patton (Kelsey Grammer), and a country singer, oddly enough (Trace Adkins, as himself), in order to rediscover the meaning of patriotism (which, in this case, means supporting the war on terror) and the 4th of July.

As a comedy, the film falters from its lack of originality. David Zucker (veteran director of classic parody films like 'Airplane!' and 'The Naked Gun') has lost his touch. The film is hoping that the target audience would get a hoot from seeing a thinly-veiled Michael Moore caricature being slapped silly over and over, but it gets old. And the film does try to find a balance between the few somber moments where it pays tribute to the men and women in the military and the many screwball comedic pratfalls by Farley and a number of disabled children. These somber moments feel out of place, and kinda stalls the film.

As a political statement, it seems like it misses the point. The main target for satire in this flick are anti-war protesters and liberals, but it sounded like the message of the movie was that you're not a patriot unless you regularly yell out "God bless America!" and listen to country music (which I don't necessarily agree with, seeing that I hate country music, myself). The film's message seemed as aimless and disjointed as a Sarah Palin speech. It was done much better in the Matt Stone/Trey Parker comedy 'Team America: World Police'.