Andrew reviews the mind baffling Saving Christmas by former Growing Pains religious whack job, Kirk Cameron.
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| "The power of Santa compels you. The power of Santa compels you!!!" |
Christian evangelical Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas is probably the most
confounding, peculiar and laughably preachy Christmas movie you could possibly
make. Where Linus van Pelt held his
trusty security blanket close by as he dispelled materialist notions about the
holiday in A Charlie Brown Christmas,
Kirk Cameron takes that concept into outer space and grounds an entire “movie”
around it. I say “movie” because this
barely fits the definition as such.
It begins with Kirk Cameron sitting beside a Christmas tree and fireplace, looking directly into the camera as he proceeds to lecture us. Through voice over narration, Mr. Cameron will continue his diatribe for the entirety of the movie until it ends on a freeze frame with him winking at the camera. For those of you who thought the micro-budget Lifetime Christian dramas Fireproof and Courageous smelled of something strange, at least they resembled a film.
It begins with Kirk Cameron sitting beside a Christmas tree and fireplace, looking directly into the camera as he proceeds to lecture us. Through voice over narration, Mr. Cameron will continue his diatribe for the entirety of the movie until it ends on a freeze frame with him winking at the camera. For those of you who thought the micro-budget Lifetime Christian dramas Fireproof and Courageous smelled of something strange, at least they resembled a film.
Shot presumably in Mr. Cameron’s home with some of the
worst cinematography ever projected in a movie theater, including shots that
inexplicably fade in and out of focus with needless frame dropping, we follow
Kirk Cameron with his brother-in-law out to a car where they sit and debate the
true meaning of Christmas before returning inside to celebrate. That’s the movie. What’s in between are scenes of flashbacks to
baby Jesus in a cave, bad CGI renderings of Romans slaughtering infants, and
Saint Nicholas beating a scoffer within an inch of his life for not believing
in the Lord our God. Cameron
pontificates on Christmas trees actually being the cross Jesus was crucified to
and the decorations representing the Garden of Eden, meanwhile scoffers inside
talk of “waging War on Christmas” with one of the oddest exchanges between two
people in a film. These two scoffers
hide their mouths with their coffee mugs while their dialogue doesn’t even
appear to be spoken by them. Then we get a song and dance number where
everyone inside the house dances to Gloria
dubstep style, with rap and Cameron himself doing the worm.
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| "This movie is so STRANGE!!!! Someone get me out of here!!!" |
Saving
Christmas is The Room of
Christmas movies. It is so inept, so
strange and so withdrawn in terms of its perception of how human beings
interact with each other in the real world it’s kind of fascinating. Only someone truly dedicated with a singular
vision and mad drive could make something anything like it. Recently, Cameron’s film has become something
of an internet meme when his film performed poorly with critics and the box
office. Cameron urged his followers to
storm the gates of Rotten Tomatoes and boost the film’s ratings irrespective of
whether or not Saving Christmas is
actually any good. The move backfired
and detractors quick to bury the film voted it back down on Rotten Tomatoes and
quickly catapulted it to the bottom spot on IMDB.com’s list as the #1 worst
film of all time.
Let me just say here, God bless him for giving me
probably the most warped movie to hit the multiplex this year. There aren’t enough drugs and alcohol in the
world to make sense of the sincerely weird outlook on life Mr. Cameron’s Saving Christmas provides.
-Andrew Kotwicki