An American Carol

One hundred sixty-five years after Charles Dickens called for civic reform, compassion, humanity and charity to be watchwords in human life with "A Christmas Carol," Hollywood's most rabid conservatives have rallied to make "An American Carol," a comedy that equates dissent with "treason," that presents Bill O'Reilly as a model of political restraint and offers us Kelsey Grammer as the ghost of Gen. George S. Patton.

Yeah, when I think "Blood and Guts," I think Frasier.

David Zucker, late of the "Airplane" and "The Naked Gun movies," a fellow who hasn't been funny in roughly 165 years, trots out that Canadian fossil Leslie Nielsen as a grandpa telling a tale about a Michael Moore-like "Scrooge" who wanted to ban the Fourth of July holiday. A liberal who "hates America" — and is, by the way, "fat" — is visited by the ghosts of John F. Kennedy, Patton, George Washington (Jon Voight) and the Angel of Death (Trace Adkins, who's no Toby Keith), sees the error of his ways and promises to always keep the Fourth, forever more.

Well, God bless us, every one, Mr. Zucker! Pity those crippled kids in the movie can't get good health care or stem cell research because those aren't conservative values, but I digress.

It's a polemic, a screed, a combination comic rant and sentimental flag-waver that doesn't work as either. Start with the casting of Chris Farley's singularly unfunny brother Kevin as Michael Malone. Yeah, he looks like Michael Moore. But you'll be making your own "The wrong Farley ..." jokes, and you can finish that thought.

Too mean? How about shooting ACLU lawyers, "zombies" waiving their writs trying to protect "privacy" in the face of the ongoing terrorist threat? Or labeling Hitler a liberal? Uh, Dave, seriously, check the tailpipe on your Mercedes. Fumes must be getting into the passenger compartment. Hitler was a racist, anti-Semite, uniform-loving, flag-waving fascist, aka an ultra-ultra-conservative.

The movie's basic thesis, that some folks don't think there's any such thing as a "just war," is as absurd as it gets. Except that isn't as absurd as it gets. The movie's history is as distorted as its classic straw-man propaganda. (What's a straw man? That's when you set up an argument that you claim the other side is making, one made of straw that's easy for you to knock down.)

Like a blind monkey, the joke-o-matic Zucker uses here lands the odd giggle — about country music, Scientology, documentaries (not "real" movies) and those silly, silly Islamic terrorists. Here, they're led by Robert Davi and a very bad hairpiece, conspiring to wreak some fresh havoc on an America too busy protecting its civil liberties to remember we're at war.