An American Carol, the David Zucker comedy lampooning a lefty filmmaker named Michael Moor...I mean, Malone, opened last night in 1639 theaters (about 1/2 the number of screens allotted to the weekend's #1 box-office draw, Beverly Hills Chihuahua).
The movie was not screened for critics. This is usually the sign of a stinker, but director David Zucker told the Los Angeles Times that "the film hadn't been screened for critics because its distributor, Vivendi Entertainment, was convinced that most film critics were way too liberal to possibly give it a fair shake."
Well, the reviews are in. Let's take a look.
Metacritic, the critic-aggregating website, gives it a score of 16 out of 100, which is abysmally low (by comparison, Gigli got an 18 and From Justin to Kelly got 14). Fans of camp might be interested to know that An American Carol shares its 16 rating with Showgirls.
Specific critical reactions:
Miami Herald
I can't imagine anyone - Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, red-state or blue-state, earthling or E.T. - deeming An American Carol anything other than "not funny." And idiotic. And demeaning. And persistently, astonishingly crummy.
Bad enough to earn a rare spot on my hallowed list of "The Worst Movies I've Ever Seen," An American Carol is testament that the country's culture wars are raging just as strongly within Hollywood as anywhere else. That is the only way to explain the presence of so many famous actors (including Kelsey Grammer, Jon Voight, James Woods and Dennis Hopper) in a film that I suspect even they will never watch in its entirety.
Chicago Tribune
In this crude polemical revision of "A Christmas Carol" (which only pointed a finger at selfish capitalists—Dickens, what a wuss!) the filmmaker, here called Michael Malone and played by a tedious Kevin Farley, sets out to abolish the 4th of July for self-promotional purposes. For his sins, he is visited by several historical figures, including John F. Kennedy, who tells Malone he should admire him for his willingness to wage war, not that other stuff. Kelsey Grammer slaps Malone around, a lot, as Gen. George Patton, who visits a Columbia University peace seminar and decries the left-wing brainwashing the kids undergo there.
A musical number performed by the lily-livered faculty points out that students get extra credit if they're "poor, black or gay."
Philadelphia Inquirer
At a picnic table, old Grandpa (Leslie Nielsen) regales the kids with his tale of "a director who really, really hates America." That would be Michael Malone (Kevin Farley, schlubby in cap and jeans), whose most recent doc is called Die, You American Pigs!...
Equating Malone with Hitler's moviemaking propagandist Leni Riefenstahl, Zucker goes on to offer a mix of lame sight gags and lamer satirical jabs at left-leaning celebs.
Cinematical
Stripped of any political agenda (as much as possible), the jokes themselves come as fast and furious as they had in Airplane!, with one significant difference: they're not funny. A plantation full of slaves singing "Hava Nagila"? Not funny. Legions of ACLU attorneys getting blasted away like a horde of zombies? Not funny. The closest thing to clever here is a brief reference to Brian de Palma's little-seen Redacted, and even that is wedged in amidst poor slapstick, obvious fat jokes and cheap homophobia (the "those butch lesbians aren't guys after all!" routine is right up there with "that fat lady's not pregnant after all!" in the So-Called Hilarity Hall of Fame).
Then in one of the film's precious few intentionally unfunny moments -- and its arguable low point -- Malone is whisked away to a dust-covered church, where the front doors open to reveal the neighboring remains of the World Trade Center and George Washington points out that the dust all around is actually made up of the ashes of 9/11 victims. (Don't worry, laugh lovers: it doesn't take but a minute for the fatty liberal to run outside and bash his head between two nearby bells.)
Salt Lake Tribune
Now, one wouldn't expect one of the makers of "Airplane!" to be subtle, but you'd at least think he occasionally would be funny. You would be wrong, as Zucker and co-writers Myrna Sokoloff and Lewis Friedman shoot ineffectually at dated targets (Jimmy Carter?), jumping uncomfortably from lame slapstick to serious self-righteousness - none worse than an awkwardly staged visit to the still-smoldering wreckage of the World Trade Center.
Orlando Sentinel
Malone, maker of such documentary hits as Die You American Pigs, who so wants to direct a fiction feature ("Fascist America"), visits a South where no Civil War freed the slaves (from their conservative masters, BTW), a pandering Neville Chamberlain listening to Hitler sing "Kumbaya" and speaks to rallies of college kids and movealong.org protesters who chant "Peace now, we don't care how" and such.
Most cringe-worthy, he hears the Yankee-accented Washington lecture him about "freedom of speech, which you abuse." And he endures lots of fat jokes and small children calling him obscene names. "Funny."
And, folks, when you've lost the New York Post with a conservative satire, you know you've lost the game:
New York Post
1/2 * out of ****
Even if it weren't three years too late to parody Moore (ineptly played by Kevin Farley), Moore's ridiculous tribute to Cuban health care in "Sicko" is far funnier than anything in this desperately laughless farce from David Zucker ("Scary Movie 3").
There is, however, a spectacularly tasteless scene in which George Washington (a waxworks Jon Voight) gives "Michael Malone" a tour of the World Trade Center ruins - which I don't think was intentionally supposed to be funny.
There are many fat jokes centering around Malone, who is being duped by al Qaeda agents in a plot to blow up Madison Square Garden on July 4. That's when JFK enlists Patton (Kelsey Grammer) to slap some conservative talking points into our hero.
Also embarrassing themselves in "An American Carol" are Leslie Nielsen, Dennis Hopper, James Woods and Paris Hilton - the latter as herself, struggling to deliver a joke involving Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.
But those are just the liberal Hollywood media élite talking (who are so élite that they spell it with an accent!). The movie's been pumped by Rush Limbaugh! The proof will be at the box office!
And it is:
As for other newcomers, David Zucker's right-wing spoof An American Carol from Vivendi Entertainment opened decently for this genre of pic at No. 8 with $1.2 million Friday from 1,639 locales for what should be a $3.4 million weekend. By contrast, Bill Maher's left-wing satire Religulous directed by Borat's Larry Charles for Lionsgate opened on Wednesday and is doing far better proportionately at the box office, making $1.1 million Friday despite playing in 1/3 as many venues as American Carol (just 502) for what should be a $3.4M weekend -- good enough for No. 10.
And you just know that Matt Drudge had the siren ready to go on a headline that read "MIKE MOORE COMEDY KILLS 'EM AT BOX OFFICE."
Alas, it's not to be. Beverly Hills Chihuahua ($30 mil) looks to be ten times the hit as An American Carol ($3.4 mil) in its first weekend.
The lesson here?
Paris Hilton making Leni Riefenstahl jokes? Box-office BOFFO, baby!