The Ghost Of Carol Present

I had almost forgotten about An American Carol until I got the email telling me that it was being released on DVD this week. Regular readers know my feelings about this offensive little crap pool of a movie but, in if you're interested, here's everything I wrote about it. If you don't feel like reading all my brilliant observations, I can quickly sum it all up this way: it sucked. That's why it failed. It had nothing to do with a brilliantly organized nation-wide liberal conspiracy of evil theater owners to intentionally under report its box office numbers. It wasn't funny and people could tell by the lack of jokes in the commercials that it wasn't funny so they stayed away. The only people who enjoyed it were movement conservatives who think that saying, "Michael Moore is fat," is a joke that never gets old.

The funniest things about Carol were the emails you could receive when you put your name on their mailing list. The one I got this week had a line that definitely made me chuckle.

Didn't get everything you wanted from Santa?! Now is your chance to stock up...

No, not that.

Just because our economy may be depressed, that doesn’t mean YOU have to be.

Ugh, not that either.

Laugh like your country depends on it by picking up An American Carol on DVD or Blu-Ray TODAY! Available now at your favorite DVD retailer or online.

Definitely not that lame joke they told over and over about laughing like your country depends on it.

This Holiday season don't miss your chance to get the movie that the Washington Post called, “Radical and Brave!” and Ain’t it Cool News called, “Ingenious!”

Yeah, baby! That's the stuff. Not the line itself but what I found when I did about 45 seconds of research. The part of my brain that keeps me from believing in Bigfoot or that aliens like to kidnap people for the sole purpose of sticking things up their asses clicked into overdrive and kept me from believing that both the WaPo's film critics and Harry Knowles' crew wet themselves with laughter over something that the rest of the world hated.

The "Ingenious" quote came from an AICN reviewer called Dr. Hfuhruhurr who is described by AICN regular Moriarty as someone who's, "contributed some openly conservative perspectives on film, with reviews from the Libertad Film Festival as well as appearances on the Jedi Council." Those are credentials that just scream, "Take my opinion seriously," so you can see why the American Carol folks hitched their wagon to this nutty right-wing star. In addition to calling it ingenious, he also called it, "THE BALLSIEST MOVIE EVER MADE," and yes, the the idea to put that in all-caps was his. This does nothing to disprove my statement that the movie was only loved by movement conservatives, nor does the quote that allegedly came from the Washington Post.

I say "allegedly" since I couldn't determine if that column to which they are referring was ever actually published in the Post. It was written by Ann Coulter wannabe Kathleen Parker who said:

“An American Carol” may not be The Best Movie You Ever Saw, but it’s something. It’s radical in its assault on the left wing; it’s brave given the risk of peer ridicule and the potential for career suicide.

She also said the movie "will probably be panned by jaded reviewers who will point out the film’s flaws." Well God forbid that film critics actually point out a movie's flaws. Now, if you're thinking that Kathleen Parker is totally blinded by bias that she would overhype a movie just because it serves her agenda...

Zucker insists he needn’t be taken seriously, but he does believe that Islamist terrorism poses a greater threat than those Americans typically demonized by Hollywood and the left.

For delivering that message, maybe Zucker deserves not an Oscar, but a Nobel Prize.

...you'd be absolutely, 100% right. The reason the movie's marketers get to say the movie was liked by the Washington Post is because Kathleen Parker is part of the Washington Post Writer's Group. It should come as no surprise that, in the Post's actual review, critic Paul Farhi wrote:

This flamingly right-wing comedy is antic and energetic, all right, but so broad and toothless that it winds up just being lame.

The makers of American Carol somehow failed to include this in their little email. I'm glad I was able to help them correct their mistake.