In Hollywood, one man is an island: David Zucker. His most recent project, An American Carol, defends what most of Hollywood offends: The United States of America. It also happens to be pretty funny.
While Zucker’s latest film certainly doesn’t reach the soaring heights of his triumphantly absurd Airplane! from 1980, An American Carol does score a number of laughs and delivers an important—and ever so timely—message along the way. Whether or not the Hollywood elites or the American left will listen is an entirely different question. In fact, to expect anything better than scathing reviews would be raising false expectations.
The movie opens with liberal filmmaker Michael Malone—a blatant parody of Michael Moore—who is on a mission to abolish the 4th of July. He resolutely declares “I love America! That’s why it needs to be destroyed.” The film takes the viewer on a journey based on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” in which Malone is visited by a host of spirits—including JFK, Patton, and George Washington—who help show the anti-American filmmaker the errors of his ways.
The humor is typical of David Zucker—for instance, just imagine a suicide bomber detonating a car and then moments later some local Afghanis casually roasting a rotisserie chicken on the flames of the wreckage. While a number of the jokes fall flat, were poorly written or were intended for the appreciation of younger ears, the movie does have its shining moments. These include a hilarious musical number in which a plethora of college professors sing and dance to the glories of 1968. Also worth mentioning are the scenes in which Malone and General Patton defend the 10 Commandments from a horde of—literal—flesh eating, undead ACLU lawyer-zombies, as well as the hysterical Rosie O’Donnell mockery in which radical Christians suicide bomb a bus and hijack airplanes all in the name of the Lord.
What makes this film standout, however, is the sheer fact that it exists in the first place.
While the movie itself is fairly straightforward and isn’t anything spectacular or breathtaking, David Zucker, Kevin Farley, Dennis Hopper, Leslie Nielson, Jon Voight and the rest of the cast ought to be applauded for merely attempting a conservative film in a hotbed of zealous radicals. While Hollywood professes to be a collection of tolerant progressives, there’s one rather large segment of the population that they would rather have nothing to do with: conservatives. For these individuals to put their reputations on the line in defense of a good cause is undoubtedly noble.
It’s never easy to stand alone and defy the status-quo, especially in the current madness of this election season. Nevertheless, An American Carol does just that. Without shame it comically lampoons Hollywood, protestors, professors, terrorists, Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Jimmy Carter, Rosie O’Donnell and more. Most importantly, however, An American Carol leaves the viewer with something you rarely get from the theater these days—a profound sense of appreciation for America.
And for that, we can be glad that Mr. Zucker is, indeed, “part of the main.”
