I paid to see "An American Carol"...

...and many of you may be asking, "why?"

Well, I could say I did it for you, my dear readers. But I suspect that there aren't a whole hell of a lot of you are all that interested—or who would believe me. Or I could say I did it out of abject curiosity. Which is, if not absolutely right, then at least close. That leaves out, though, one thing that motivated me a bit more than any normal human being should, or would, want to admit. 

Which is, that I liked Baseketball. 

Now, I've often been advised to blame my affection for Baseketball on a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome. That is, I visited the set of Baseketball for Premiere while the film was shooting in the summer of 1998, and had such a terrific time that I really fell in the tank for both the film and its makers. I was their best audience during rehearsals, laughing like a maniac as Robert Vaughn said things like "Fuck em! Let 'em get a room at the Marriott." Ernest Borgnine and I hit it off so well he came to the set on a day he wasn't even shooting just so I could interview him! I traded wisecracks with one of director David Zucker and co-writer Robert Locash's team, dyspeptic gag writer Lewis Friedman, and Friedman and I made vague plans to smoke cigars and drink single malts together when we got back to NYC. And then there was Jenny McCarthy sitting on my lap. And those South Park guys. I was younger then, and less bitter.

So when the picture came out, I was so desperate to like it...that I forced myself to. Dave Kehr, who I barely knew at the time, sat in front of me at the all-media screening, during which I laughed and laughed and laughed. He must have thought I was a complete fucking lunatic. 

Still, I retained an affection for the boys, and when I heard that Zucker, a former self-described "Kennedy liberal" (boy, that potentially covers a lot of ground, doesn't it?), had become a post-9/11 conservative, I didn't hold it against him. Hell, I was a "liberal hawk" myself for about twenty minutes, until...well, never mind. 

Zucker collaborated with the above-mentioned Friedman (and man, now we're never gonna share cigars and single-malts) and one Myrna Sokoloff. I'm reasonably certain you've read quite a bit about it by now. Yes, it was worse than I expected. Frankly, I was already too bored to continue to be offended by the "liberal=traitor" meme pretty much about the 7,000th time that jerk Glenn Reynolds used the phrase "Not anti-war, just on the other side," to describe anybody who deigned question the Bush administration. Although it is a new twist to have a ten-or-so-year-old girl use the phrase "traitorous sack of shit." Little girls using cusswords—never not funny! Even to conservatives. And while I fear that to note this is to take the film entirely too seriously, I thought it was interesting that Zucker and company's portrayal of terrorists, funny names and mentions of Allah aside and suicide bombings aside, posits that these people think pretty much exactly as Westerners do. That their ideas of rights and what constitutes responsible/responsive government are exactly the same. "Democracy! Freedom! A president who is held accountable!" one fake Afghani exults when asked why he is partaking in an election. Yes, it would be damn pretty to think so. It is not condescending to point out that there are substantial cultural differences between the east and west which cannot be papered over with post-Enlightenment platitudes. Zucker seems entirely unaware of this. I imagine were someone to point it out to him, he'd say that person was being condescending.

What's finally most interesting about An American Carol is its incoherence. This lies not so much in the fact that, in cheerleading for the War on Terror, Zucker seems to have embraced a number of conservative talking points that have nothing to do with said war—in one scene, it appears that the film is very seriously calling for the abolition of the separation of church and state, which I'm not certain that Zucker, as a Jew, would really really want—than it does in the fact that the anarchic humor Zucker and company specialize in tends to work against the propagation of an extended polemic. At one point, it's revealed that the anti-American filmmaker Michael Malone's hatred of his country stems from a traumatic adolescent experience, in which his high-school sweetheart fell for his best friend: an Army enlistee. "I love a man in a uniform," she explains as a heartbroken Malone leaves. Outside her door, policemen, firemen, even astronauts are lining up. "She did an astronaut?" Malone asks his guide, the ghost of George Patton. "She did the whole [insert name of space mission here—I forgot it!] team!" Patton says. And in the next shot, she's marrying Malone's soldier ex-friend. Okay. Nice girls are patriotic...get gang-banged...and then marry their firsts. Works for me. 

Then, as the film is trying to hew to DIckens, it gives the Malone character a (yes, patriotic, and Navy-joining) nephew, who himself has about half a dozen kids, all with different amusing ailments, each of whom is always asking if their "fat-ass" great uncle is ever going to cough up the money needed for their varied operations. It perhaps never occured to Zucker that the specifics of this particular scenario perhaps make an oblique comment on our own health care system. Doesn't matter anyway, because at the end of the film—spoiler alert!—Zucker wipes out that whole family in an elaborate sight gag placed smack-dab in the middle of an extra-treacly "God Bless America" moment. The guys can't help it.

Too bad the gag's not particularly funny, in keeping with much of the rest of the film. It is not entirely bereft of laughs—Kevin Farley got me to chortle during his many "why are you slapping me moments," Geoffrey Arend, as a would-be suicide bomber, is amusing in a Stoogey way, and Robert Davi is reliably dry. 

"Terrorism isn't our fault!" Malone's character exhorts an anti-war crowd at the end of the film. Maybe it isn't, and maybe it is (and one's answer will always have a lot to do with how you define "fault"), but in the worldview of this movie, that is ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW. And after you know it, what you should do is shut up and let the people in charge do their jobs. To do anything otherwise is to "abuse" your freedom of speech. Yeah...9/11—which, in case you were wondering, I do not believe was "our fault"—really did cause some folks to lose their minds. 

Comments

[Ray Pride]

The best rumination I've read on the issues, if you don't include the American Carol website wanting snitches on teenage ticket-takers.

[Matt Singer]

As a longtime David Zucker fan (at least when he's working in concert with his brother, Jim Abrahams, and Pat Proft) I have paid to see SCARY MOVIE 3 and 4 in theaters and though I doubt I'll get to AMERICAN CAROL in a theater, I will catch up with it eventually on DVD. I can't say I join you in your love of BASEKETBALL, but paling with Ernest Borgnine could win me over to just about any cinematic cause.

I want to know what the crowd was like when you saw AMERICAN CAROL. Was the theater crowded? Did people laugh?

[Dan]

So, basically, what you're saying is Zucker doesn't understand the nuances so the gags don't work. About what I expected from the trailer, but still profoundly disappointing. "Baseketball" was colossally stupid, but it had its moments, and "Scary Movie 3" was far better than the first two, and I don't mean that as a backhanded compliment. I didn't bother with number four.

Me, I'd just like to know when the Republican Party embraced JFK as one of their own, because last I checked, they preferred another gentleman to be president in 1960.

[Andrew]

Glenn, you should never have to apologize for liking Baseketball. That movie is hysterical. What other film is there to see a joke about Al Michaels being molested by his father?

[Dan Coyle]

because I love all of you, I took the time to find John Nolte's review:

http://dirtyharrysplace.com/?p=4804

And some follow ups:

http://dirtyharrysplace.com/?p=4862

http://dirtyharrysplace.com/?p=4890

[Dan Coyle]

I would have liked Basketball had I not got the sneaking suspicion that Trey Parker and Matt Stone were essentially playing themselves- a pair of monstrously self-righteous, bullying punks who need those weaker than them to score off of and make themselves feel better.

Which, as I learned from someone who was on the early writing staff of SP, is not far off.

[Dan Coyle]

I must admit I paid money to see Scary Movie 3 and 4. But I usually refer to those films as ANNA FARIS' RACK 3 AND 4.

[bill]

Glenn, even I don't want to see this. And I remember laughing at least a few times at "Baseketball", as well.

[Sam Adams]

The key (well, a key) to Carol's badness is the fact that, per the Weekly Standard on-set profile, Sokoloff was in charge of the movie's plot, and Friedman of its jokes. I have a vision of the poor gagman trying desperately to dig himself out of whatever sad, bitter hole the operative from the Republican Jewish Committee has dug him into. "Okay, so I've got George Washington lecturing Michael Moore in the ashes of Ground Zero -- good luck!"

[Dan Coyle]

Village Voice interview with Zucker:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-10-01/film/airplane-director-david-zucker-talks-about-the-left-and-his-new-movie-an-american-carol/

A lot of Michael Moore's image is built upon populism. Your movie suggests the opposite: Michael Malone hates country music and NASCAR and looks down on people who aren't on the East Coast.

"I mean, he's gone and said that Americans are the dumbest people on the planet. We're pretty much taking these people at their word. I don't know Michael Moore. The thing about the country music, for example, is from a real quote."

In his book Downsize This!, he encourages people to listen to country music as the voice of America . . .

"Well, there must be different quotes."

[MovieMan0283]

I too will be paying to see American Carol, probably today, but my write-up will not be appearing until next week, when I begin my every-day-till-Nov. 4 focus on political docs and movies about American politics. I sense the movie could be of immense sociological value and simultaneously an aesthetic catastrophe. I had similar feelings about W., but am beginning to suspect that Stone might surprise us with a movie that isn't a complete train wreck. I enjoyed the recent Parallax View-inspired trailer, so we'll see.