An American Carol (2008)

At first, I thought the movie was tongue-in-cheek, parodying how Conservatives seem to view Liberals, and waited for the punchline...Unfortunately, there is no punchline. David Zucker was actually trying to parody progressives, but instead created a list of common misconceptions. It reminded me of when Creationists try to parody evolution. If you don't understand something, your parody of it won't make sense. I can laugh at political jokes I don't agree with if they at least represent my position correctly in order to make the joke. It's on par with making fun of the idea of Global Climate Change while not understanding the difference between climate and weather, or like criticizing Islam to a Sikh. He won't be offended by your criticism of Islam, only the fact that you don't understand what a Sikh is. I wasn't offended by David Zucker's jokes, I'm just disappointed that he has such horrible misconceptions about what progressives want/believe.For instance, Michael Monroe's apparent support of Cuba in the film is (I guess?) supposed to parody more liberal positions on healthcare, but it misses the point entirely by suggesting that what liberals want is government intervention and control rather than better results, as if the means always justified the ends. He gets so up his own ass he even contradicts himself: For instance, during a ghost-of-Christmas-past-esque visit from George S Patton, Neville Chamberlain manages to prevent WWII, presumably saving millions of lives, after which Patton says "see? Talking to dictators gets you nothing". The fact that millions of lives were saved was apparently offset by the embarrassment of having Neville Chamberlain shine Hitler's shoes, as if not looking like a pussy were more important than saving lives. They then try to suggest that slavery would have continued without the Civil War... even though the UK, France, and pretty much every single country that ever abolished slavery did so without a war... again, as if liberals were always concerned with the means over the ends. Every joke relies on a misconception or misunderstanding.This movie was really really really sad and horrible. I weep for the future of America.

I saw this movie by chance on Danish TV last night. And I enjoyed it. It is from an openly conservative viewpoint, which I found refreshing, and the parody of Micheal Moore is quite good. It is also quite funny. It probably sets off all the 'politically correct' alarm bells - but I quite like that :) It has a similar structure to many other 'parody' movies and uses big (ish) names in cameo roles - so it is not ground breaking or new in that sense. What is new is that several actors were prepared to be in a movie that could have damaged their careers in some ways due to the political stance that is taken. However, I personally feel that far too many otherwise good movies are dominated by a 'politically correct' agenda.

This film makes its points against Michael Moore and the left leaning political party by stooping to the level of what it is accusing the other side of doing itself. In one scene it shows an alternate America without the civil war having existed and shows African Americans as slaves, satirizing stereotypical slaves; and yet in the real world within the movie the middle eastern characters are supposedly just as thoughtless and evil. It argues against documentaries lying in order to make money and tell the audience what it wants to hear; and yet it is impossible to believe that this film isn't made to simply appease those who already have a vendetta against Moore or that it isn't wanting to make a profit off of the disagreement and divisiveness of the politics behind it.It's a movie that seems to imply that all that are involved believe in the message of the movie... however I would hope that this is not true. It's a weak argument that full of embarrassing moments of stubbornness and humor at the cost of historical correctness. It is sad that Leslie Neilson had anything to do with the film, much less the fact that it was one of his last. After watching this film you'll have to remember that these actors and this director once did projects which had class and honest to goodness good sense. This film has none of either.

Gutted James Woods was attached to this disgrace. Shame on anyone that took a paycheck for this. If it was truly satirical and funny then maybe, but how could anyone read this script and then perform and think it was funny.... shame, shame, shame and shame.Michael Moore might be a lot of things but at least he deserves a decent paridoy written by people that can actually write. There is always a minimum threshold that any so called feature film must cross to be acceptable. That threshold is 90 minutes at the absolute minimum. This film with credits does 81... nothing more need be said. Shame on those that made this disgrace of a "film". Dave