"An American Carol" Review - Written by TonyD

“An American Carol”
2008
* out of ****
Director: David Zucker
Cast: Kevin P. Farley, Kelsey Grammer, Trace Adkins


Do you remember a time where David Zucker was funny? Weren’t they the days? After coming off with hits such as “Airplane!,” “Top Secret,” (which I really don’t think it is all that it is cracked up to be, but still okay) and “The Naked Gun” (hell, I think even the third one is brilliant), he still manages to make movies like “Scary Movie 4” and “Spy Hard.” And now he is back with one of the worst comedies this year, “An American Carol.”

Now figure this one out – I laughed harder in the Dane Cook movie, the Anna Faris movie, and the remake of “Prom Night” combined more than I laughed at a David Zucker movie. And Zucker used to be the master of satirical comedy. Once you come back with an answer for that, we might actually have a nice debate going on.

Kevin P. Farley plays Michael Malone, a cheap rip-off of Michael Moore with even more fat and less likability. With such hits as “Die, You American Pig!” and “No Country for Americans,” his documentaries are some of the best out there, and it catches the attention of two Middle Eastern wannabes that really want to make a movie. So they hire Malone to direct, but the funniest thing about this movie is that it steers COMPLETELY away from the filmmaking plot, and goes to yet another useless remake of “A Christmas Carol,” with Michael Malone playing Scrooge with black slaves. And I’m not making any of this up.

For the past few spoof films, they relied on making fun of pop culture moments that had nothing to do with the plot of the story. Whether it was those Friedberg-Seltzer movies or “Superhero Movie,” none of them could really live up to the utterly greatness that was “Hot Fuzz.” But the only thing that I can actually recommend about “An American Carol” is that the film doesn’t bring up too much pop-culture. It’s actually kept down to a minimum and uses history to play a part of the story.

But yet, I think I would rather have shitty pop culture references than have moments when I felt nothing at all. For a David Zucker movie, there are little laughs here, and if any, chuckles. I think David Zucker would rather try and make Michael Moore look like a jackass than try to make his film funny. But hey, he could do whatever he pleases. He is the filmmaker and I am the audience. It doesn’t matter to him because he is getting his paycheck. The next thing is that he is going to start recycling his own material for other movies…

Oh… which REMINDS me…

For the very little people who saw the David Zucker-produced “The Onion Movie” earlier this June when it came to DVD, you may be interested in this little bit of news. For those who didn’t probably still would be if they just wanted to see this movie flop. There is a segment in “The Onion Movie” when Egyptian stand-up comedian Ahmed Ahmed (also in “Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Tour”) played two terrorist bombers, one that was very experienced and one that wasn’t. I’m assuming that David Zucker had the rights to use this scene in “An American Carol,” so he did around the ten minute mark of the movie.

Now the funny thing about this is that very little people did see “The Onion Movie,” so they will watch this scene and laugh their asses off. And I get it – it’s a funny scene. But tell me why someone would use their own material all over again and try to get a laugh when they could just make up brand-new jokes? This tells me one of two things – 1. Zucker, being the producer of “The Onion Movie,” stole this scene which could or could not have been his, and showed it to a wider audience to get a better laugh, or 2. Zucker ran out of jokes.

And why did the filmmakers get Kevin P. Farley, the younger and less funny brother of the late great Chris Farley, to play Michael Malone, when they could have gotten Michael Moore to play himself? He would have done a much funnier job, and would have done it so it wouldn’t have seemed like they weren’t just looking for a bunch of slapping and fat jokes. Moore has his own sense of humor that is unique to many senses of humor that I’ve seen before, so maybe he might have been able to use some politically-correct jokes as well, instead of just firing off jokes at Republicans and Democrats that made almost no sense at all.

Usually I never bitch about a movie’s running time, but at eighty-three minutes, “An American Carol” is too long of a movie. It could have ended at the sixty-five minute mark, and I would have been able to make it into my next film for the day (“Religulous”) on time (don’t worry, I did, but I couldn’t grab my favorite seat). For a film that is about as unfunny as the war in Iraq, and for a film that has more endings than “Return of the King,” it is a miracle that I didn’t give “An American Carol” my dreaded BOMB rating.