Movie and Television Reviews

I approach conservative or religious-themed fiction (Modern only: Anybody's safe with Shakespeare, Mozart, Bach, Dante, etc. Conservative and religious non-fiction is also O.K.) with some trepidation. I've read Catholic fiction like Elijah: An Apocalypse and watched that conservative sketch comedy on Fox. Eh. I don't even try conservative knock offs like Christian heavy metal or fantasy novels. My points are that I didn't have high hopes for An American Carol, and that I would tell you if it's bad.

Father Elijah: An Apocalypse by Michael D. O'Brien

Conservatives need not fear a ninety minute wince-fest, however. An American Carol is the best explicitly conservative movie since...ummm...errr...I don't know, maybe since Why We Fight (Other movies have conservative themes, like the Narnia ones, but they're more universal and less partisan.).

The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Widescreen Edition)

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Three-Disc Collector's Edition) by C. S. Lewis

Why We Fight World War II - The Complete Series

The plot, a Michael Moorish director is visited by three ghosts that teach him that, for the most part, American wars have benefited both the United States and the world, makes sense and is really quite clever.

Almost all of the jokes are legitimately funny, even accounting for the conservative catharsis factor.

For satire to be funny, it has to skewer its victim at an angle. We're familiar with religious satire- ignorant, hypocritical. Conservatives are sex-less, warlike, and uptight.

Zucker has some pretty good takes on his leftist targets here. The ACLU are relentless, destroying zombies. Protesters are naive and spoiled. College professors are America haters nostalgic for their 60s youth. Terrorists are klutzy fanatics, and Michael Moore is a second rate liar-hypocrite who ignores Cuban misery to make his point, doesn't give charity (Joe Biden), and is motivated by his own adolescent amorous failures.

One can object to the one-sidedness of American Carol, but I think it's fair to ignore fairness this once. I can actually find instances of everything Zucker lampoons in American Carol. I can't say the same about the male-raping guards in Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay or whatever the heck was going on in Syriana. And, unlike Michael Moore, Mel Gibson, raked over the coals in Zohan, isn't a terrorist-adored liar.

Syriana (Widescreen Edition)

Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (Unrated Two-Disc Special Edition + Digital Copy) by Ranjit Kumar

You Don't Mess With the Zohan (Unrated Single-Disc Edition)

It's probably a lot less hateful than Religulous.

There's slapstick.

Politics/ Message:

Pro-American, pro-just war, anti-anti. When was the last time you heard a gay joke that didn't position gays as straits' moral, humorous, or stylistic superiors? Certainly, American Carol is the most un-PC movie of all time.

Little kids cuss, which I find unpleasant and unfunny.