Bweinh! Goes to the Movies — An American Carol

October 6, 2008, 11:30 pm; posted by
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Low expectations get an undeserved rap. Think of how helpful they are! They help us endure torturous high school musicals, they operate as a bulwark against corrosive despair in the workplace, and they singlehandedly keep nearly 3,000 Arby’s restaurants all across the United States in business.

I brought my own well-worn set of low expectations last weekend when I went to see David Zucker’s answer to the Hollywood left: An American Carol. In my mental budget, I had already allocated my $9 ticket as a “political contribution,” rather than “entertainment.” I don’t particularly like going to the movie theater: movies are expensive, and if I wait a few months, I get to watch them for what feels like free when Netflix mails them to my apartment. But for the first time since The Passion of the Christ, I wanted to buy a movie ticket to make a monetary statement.

The nagging problem was that I knew what kind of movie it was likely to be. Zucker, acclaimed director of Airplane! and The Naked Gun, reviled director of BASEketball and Scary Movie 4, is not known for subtlety. I’ve enjoyed the over-the-top political ads he’s produced since 9/11 made him a conservative, but like everything else these days, they’re designed to entertain people who already agree. No liberal watches a commercial that shows Madeline Albright painting a terrorist cave and comes away thinking, “You know, maybe I was wrong about Iraq — and I’m suddenly queasy about embryonic stem cell research too.”

And as much as I hate to be proven right, that was the biggest problem with this film. Much of the first hour made it impossible for anyone but rock-ribbed Republicans to take anything of value from it — and at times its tactics turned me off too. Just so you know, I strongly agree with the film’s main premise. Evil men exist, they are committed to killing us, and we must learn the lessons of history and show the fortitude needed to stop them from doing so. Hear, hear.

But I’m not comfortable with a running gag where all Muslims are named “Mohammed Hussein.” I don’t want to see an “alternate history” where a pacifist Lincoln caused Gary Coleman to be born into slavery. I’m not a big fan of the ACLU, but I also have no interest in firing shotguns at its members. These and other edgy gags simply weren’t as funny as they needed to be to overcome their bad taste, and an audience ready to roar in subversive laughter was left squirming in its seats instead — and worse, wondering about the guy in the back who found all the racial humor way too funny.

There were some amusing moments and some deep moments — on the whole, I’m glad I went. But Zucker’s overbearing attempts at satire only ensured that its targets could safely ignore and marginalize the film as just another right-wing hit piece. I can only hope my $9 donation was enough to earn us another shot. Maybe, for once, I can leave pleasantly surprised.

I give this film a “Bwe” out of “Bweinh!” (3 out of 7).


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