An American Carol

An American Carol

If you thought Airplane! and Top Secret were riotously funny, you will probably enjoy David Zucker's latest film, An American Carol. It is intentionally parallel to Dickens' A Christmas Carol--and in one or two places, it carries the parallel forward in ways that don't work, except for the slapstick sight gags that come from little Timmy, and his sister with the vision problems. But the real strength of the movie is that it is (and I'm not giving anything away here), about an obnoxious Hollywood "documentary" film maker whose anti-Americanism is given a thorough shaking by visits from three American patriots from the past.

This could have been a really, really preachy film--but with David Zucker making it? There are too many sight gags, completely unexpected twists, and wickedly sharp satirical jabs. My cheeks still hurt from laughing--and I've been out of the movie for an hour. The sequence with the chanting college students and the tenured radicals musical number is still giving me a chuckle!

It is rated PG-13, primarily for language, although the sequence with the ACLU zombies is probably too violent and bloody for it have reached PG anyway. I do wish that Zucker had decided to go for a PG rating, because there are large numbers of social conservatives who would have appreciated the film quite a bit more with only the most trivial of changes. As it is, my wife is tempted (when it comes out on video) to use the sequence of George Washington (played by John Voight) in St. Paul's Chapel (just down the block from the World Trade Center) at some point in the classroom. It is powerful.

A number of the actors who appear in this film are noted conservatives or libertarians--which makes them stand out for that very reason in Hollywood, and you can tell that some of them were putting heart and soul into their performances. Kelsey Grammer's performance as George S. Patton is simultaneously dramatic and humorous. James Woods' performance is especially touching because he actually warned the flight crew on a Boston to Los Angeles flight a month before 9/11 that some of those onboard were acting oddly--almost like they were planning to hijack the flight. We now know that these were the 9/11 hijackers, doing a dry run.