John "Dirty Harry" Nolte is really looking forward to this. David Weigel previewed some bits.



A part of me is very sympathetic to whoever it was who said that conservatives would be better off letting liberals make preachy comedies and mocking them from the sidelines, instead of making preachy comedies of their own and thus opening themselves up to the same ridicule.

'American Carol' takes aim at Dems
"An American Carol" is coming to a theater near you, whether you like it or not.
A zany comedy that promises to offend Hollywood's liberal sensibilities -- coming just one month before the presidential election -- there's more riding on "Carol" than one might expect.
For one, it's the first wide release distributed by Vivendi Entertainment, which launched as a theatrical distribution company in March. Vivendi will open "Carol" on 2,000 screens Oct. 3.
And "Carol" is the first theatrical production from Mpower Pictures, the studio co-founded by Mel Gibson's longtime producing partner Steve McEveety.
Hollywood Reporter, September 14

So...basically, this is Scary/Epic Movie/Meet the Spartans for the conservative viewer?

I was assigned to review this film, but was then pulled off An American Carol and assigned instead to review Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

[pause for reaction]

I'm skeptical about An American Carol, the preview for which didn't thrill me, but in comparison to what I'll be seeing instead ... hey, maybe I can take my daughter to Chihuahua. I'll watch her watching the movie. That'll probably be more entertaining.

Best. Laugh. Today.

Conservatives generally can't do comedy. Especially satire. (Remember the Half Hour News Hour?)

Zucker can do comedy. But he's only done parody and broad physical comedy, never substantive satire. So we have Michael Moore grabbing some woman's breasts and getting slapped.

At 1:22 in the trailer, the voiceover says "From David Zucker, the master of movie satire."

At the same instant, the phrase "The master of movie satire" appears, in quotation marks, on the screen.

It's followed by an attribution line.

The attribution reads: "David Zucker."

Yeah, I liked that moment.

New conservative movie 'American Carol' tries to show Hollywood who's right
They meet discreetly once a month at a res­taurant in the Valley. At first, there weren't many--Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammer, Dennis Hopper--but now...there still aren't many. Nevertheless, they're a resolute bunch: proud, loud, and a little lonely. They are Hollywood's conservatives. "You sort of feel like you have to hide it," says director David Zucker. "When you meet, you give each other a secret look--'Are you a Republican too?' It's the new gay." . . .
"Most political comedies say both sides are bad," says Zucker. "We're saying, F--- it. We're taking a side." Indeed, there is shtick in this flick that would offend even a pig in lipstick. There's a jaw-dropping spoof of suicide-bomber training videos, and a bit about "radical Christians" hijacking planes with weaponized crucifixes. Like Oliver Stone's W., which opens two weeks later, Carol could be an October surprise that ignites huge controversy just before the election--or it could be ignored by moviegoers of both parties. . . .
Entertainment Weekly, September 17

IMDB business numbers on this are interesting:
$6,960,000 (USA) (26 October 2008)
$5,971,000 (USA) (12 October 2008)
$3,656,000 (USA) (5 October 2008)

A month after release, the only place near me it's showing is the $1 theater (where you can still see Journey to the Center of the Earth and Wall-E).

Got to it today. It might have been decent if it actually had been a parody of a Moore doc. There is certainly plenty to parody there. But that's limited to a few minutes. The rest is parody of Moore himself. It certainly rests on some dubious ideas: criticism is (a) unpatriotic, and (b) unsupportive of troops; and the kind of Real Americans Vote Republican and Non-Republicans Hate America rhetoric that seemed to be part of Palin's job in the campaign.

OK, Peter, my thoughts on it are up

I think this is a good point. I read a piece where someone pointed out that while it might have been funny if you had a joke about O'Reilly slapping Moore around and it was actually Michael Moore, since clearly, Moore would be in on the joke. But when it is the real O'Reilly saying he likes slapping around a Michael Moore Surrogate, it just comes off as vicious.

Political Movies: It’s the Quality, Stupid
What’s fascinating about W. and An American Carol is they both suffer from the same basic failure — the underestimation or “misunderestimation,” in the parlance, of their protagonists. In their film parody of Michael Moore, Zucker and Sokoloff give us a Moore (the movie’s Michael Malone) who is a self-centered dolt who overeats. Self-centered? Of course. Overeater? Obviously. But dolt? I am not so sure — at least not to the degree the filmmakers want us to believe. I am no fan of Moore’s by a long shot, but nowhere in evidence in this movie is the crafty, ambitious weasel who was able to turn his own mediocre film talent into box office magic and, for a while at least, massive political influence.
Roger L. Simon, Pajamas Media, October 22