Ah, I can finally do a proper edition of Movies I Haven't Seen. Last week, I attempted to comment on David Zucker's upcoming neocon fantasy An American Carol. Unfortunately, at the time all I had were the observations of others. Now, they have released a trailer and set up a website, both of which remove all doubt that not only will this movie will not only suck but that, in the future, if you wanted to give something an award for sucking, the award would be called The Carol. Here's the trailer.
Okay then, what have we learned? Well, we all now know that Michael Moore is fat. I mean he's just fat. In case you're not getting this, he's super duper big, morbidly obese, El Moore Grosso. If you're wondering why this point is being hammered over and over again, it means that you're not a movement conservative or right wing nut. To those people, the fact that Michael Moore is fat is intrinsically funny. In fact, it never gets old. If you're ever working as a stand up comic at a big conservative get-together, just say, "Michael Moore is fat," over and over again throughout your entire set. I guarantee that the room will smell of urine because everyone there will piss themselves laughing and they will hire you again next year. Members of the Heritage Foundation, the writers at NRO's The Corner and the comments sections of right wing blogs will giggle the way 8 year olds do when someone farts every time the image of the fat old Michael Moore look-alike appears on screen. Unfortunately, you need many more people than that to make a movie into a hit.
This reminds me of the last time a conservative comedy used Michael Moore's weight for comic effect. That was the puppet movie Team America made by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Unlike Carol, Team America was actually funny. The main reason is that Parker and Stone weren't trying to start a movement. They didn't try to recruit people to be Theater Captains or to go door to door handing out leaflets promoting the movie. Parker and Stone sat down and said, "How do we make the funniest movie possible that huge numbers of people will want to see so that we can both entertain people and make big bags of cash at the same time?" One of the ideas they had was to make fat jokes about Michael Moore. They showed him with hot dogs in each hand and covered in mustard. The main difference between that movie and An American Carol is that Moore's appearance in the film was very brief. He was in two scenes and I'd be willing to bet that total screen time was less than a minute. This is because, though they do possess many right wing beliefs which were incorporated into Team America, Parker and Stone aren't right wing nuts. They made a funny movie that even people who disagreed with their ideas could laugh at and, thus, managed to disseminate those ideas far beyond the conservative audience.
Speaking of the desire to create a movement, let's look at the web site. When I first watched this yesterday, it crashed Firefox 3 times. That was because it suffered from incompetent web design. It had several graphics scripts running at once including movie clips, animated gifs and pop ups of Arab terrorists. It made many of the same web design mistakes that 16 year old boys make when they're trying to set up their Hayden Panettiere Worship Shrines. It's running fine for me now partly because they seem to have streamlined it and thrown out some of the clutter and partly because I'm not seeing it on a more powerful computer. However, even one day can be too late in a case like this. Just imagine all the bright eyed College Republicans taking a break from not getting laid to check on this web site and having their browsers crash. Instantly, they're worried that the term papers and pictures of the sweaty, buff King Leonidas contained on their hard drives may have been wiped out. They'll never go back and will now never enter in their names, email addresses and cell phone numbers which is what they want you to do right there on the front page which brings me back to the idea that the ultimate idea behind this movie is not to create an entertaining film but to start a movement. This website also contains the ultimate sign that you're participating in a movement. It gives you information on how to book group showings. If a movie is heavily marketing group showings, it's normally a sign that the movie will mainly appeal to church groups, but church groups are just another type of Movement.
An American Carol will be heavily promoted by right wing outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and will probably have a halfway decent ad budget. If recent box office history of other heavily promoted conservative films like Expelled are any indication, it will gross around 5 million dollars in its first week, the bulk of which will come from group showings organized by churches and conservative groups. Any chance of crossover appeal will be limited by boycotts from liberals who will dislike it for its politics and horrible reviews from everyone else who will dislike it for the fact that Holocaust documentaries have more laughs and the movie will quickly drop off into oblivion.
In the meantime, between now and October 3, I will have no trouble coming up with something to write about.
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