My Thoughts on An American Carol

This morning I went to see An American Carol. Oddly enough it was at the same theater where I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 four years ago.

I actually missed the first few minutes of the film so I can't give a complete assessment. But I saw a sufficient amount to provide some observations.

There were only six people in a theater that could hold 250. Well, it was a Sunday morning. This is also Boston.

The storyline is fairly straightforward. Leslie Nielsen tells a group of young children a story about a documentary filmmaker named Michael Malone (who bears a strange resemblance to Michael Moore) who hates America and wants to abolish the Fourth of July. During the course of the film, Malone (played by Kevin Farley - brother of the late Chris Farley) is visited by several spirits in a Dickensian like manner - General George S. Patton (played by Kelsey Grammer), George Washington (played memorably by Jon Voight) and The Angel of Freaking Death (played by country music star Trace Adkins). You can see other Hollywood conservatives in this film including Kevin Sorbo, Dennis Hopper and Robert Davi. There are also cameos from Bill O'Reilly and Paris Hilton. Talk about odd couples.

Created by David Zucker of Airplane and The Naked Gun series, An American Carol has the element of all those films although not quite as funny as those comedic groundbreakers. Don't get me wrong. It makes the Left look plenty silly with such items as MoveAlong.org for instance. I liked Nielsen's line about college student demonstrators as, "People who don't know anything and shout it out loud." The funniest scene involved the Christian suicide bombers inspired by Rosie O'Donnell's line, "Radical Christianity is just as dangerous as Radical Islam."

When I first heard about this film my first thought was, "Why wasn't this film made in 2004 or 2005 at the height of Michael Moore's success?" I still feel that way. Although to be fair, this are references to Moore's declining influence. Entertainment Tonight anchor Mary Hart features Malone in a "Where Are They Now?" segment. Malone is also derisively referred to as a documentary filmmaker as opposed to a feature filmmaker.

An American Carol is good for a chuckle and a couple of moments of poignancy. Hopefully, there will be other feature films made from a conservative point of view be they comedies or otherwise. There is certainly a receptive audience for it.