Earlier this month, The Weekly Standard published a slobbering cover story on spoofmeister David Zucker's latest film, An American Carol. Zucker's one of the ZAZ boys, the legendary comedy collective behind Kentucky Fried Movie, Airplane!, and The Naked Gun, and though I'm not much of a fan of his recent work, the article piqued my curiosity. Zucker has banded together with like-minded Hollywood conservatives to spoof the American left, and though the movie promised to be as slapsticky as the rest of his work, I suspected that it might lack a light touch. The Standard's description of the plot:
[T]he film follows the exploits of a slovenly, anti-American filmmaker
named Michael Malone, who has joined with a left-wing activist group
(Moovealong.org) to ban the Fourth of July. Along the way, Malone is
visited by the ghosts of three American heroes--George Washington,
George S. Patton, and John F. Kennedy--who try to convince him he's got
it all wrong. When terrorists from Afghanistan realize that they need
to recruit more operatives to make up for the ever-diminishing supply
of suicide bombers, they begin a search for just the right person to
help produce a new propaganda video. "This will not be hard to find in
Hollywood," says one. "They all hate America." When they settle on
Malone, who is in need of work after his last film (Die You American Pigs) bombed at the box office, he unwittingly helps them with their plans to launch another attack on American soil.
Riiight. And here, via the AV Club, is the trailer to this ray of cinematic sunshine.
I laughed once at the video, I admit, though it was at Bill O'Reilly's chuckling review--"A reality check? You bet."--and so probably doesn't count.
--Ben Wasserstein