You’ll be forgiven if you’ve not heard of An American Carol, David Zucker’s follow-up to Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4, set to precede Scary Movie 5 (seriously, there are five of those fucking things). There’s no trailer, and the movie doesn’t even have an official web page. But, oh, you’re missing out on some surefire train wreck gold if you haven’t been keeping up with the project.

An American Carol is basically a Scary Movie-style spoof of American liberal politics, starring every famous conservative entertainer. Which is pretty much just, um, Kelsey Grammar, Jon Voight, James Woods, and Dennis Hopper. Oh, and Kevin Sorbo. Clint Eastwood, apparently, still wanted to be able to look himself in the mirror afterwards. The cast is rounded out with conservative commentators and country music stars like Bill O’Reilly and Trace Adkins. And basically they seem to have just made a movie where they all run around saying liberals are stupid! for an hour and a half. We’ll see how that turns out for them.

The movie stars Chris Farley’s little brother (Larry the Cable Guy was busy, seriously, not a joke) as "Michael Malone", a hefty anti-American documentary filmmaker out to ban the pledge of allegiance, with the help of the dastardly movealong.org. He gets visited by the ghosts of George Washington (Jon Voight), John F Kennedy (some soap star named Chriss Anglin), and General Patton (totally Kelsey Grammar, I’m not even kidding), and they show him the error of his ways. Hence the "Carol" part of the title, I guess. Michael Moore is Scrooge.

See, it’s clever because the names are almost the same as the people they’re parodying, so you don’t have to waste time that could otherwise be spent rollicking in the funny trying to figure out exactly who each of their targets is supposed to be. They’re doing the work for you! Also, Michael Malone lets out a roaring fart within ten minutes of the film opening or I will paypal you £100.

Apparently a writer for The Weekly Standard went out to the set to rally the troops for their Hollywood Takes On The Left cover story. I will no ruin some of the film’s jokes, because it’s surely going to be funnier to read about them than to actually watch. Um, spoilers, I guess.

Dennis Hopper makes an appearance as a judge who defends his courthouse by gunning down ACLU lawyers trying to take down the Ten Commandments.
Because apparently his copy of the Ten Commandments was missing thou shall not kill, or something. See, it’s funny because it’s stupid to have to win arguments when you have guns!

David Alan Grier plays a slave in a scene designed to show Malone what might have happened if the United States had not fought the Civil War. As Patton explains to a dumbfounded Malone that the plantation they are visiting is his own, Grier thanks the documentarian for being such a humane owner. As they leave, another slave, played by Gary Coleman, finishes polishing a car and yells "Hey, Barack!" before tossing the sponge to someone off-camera.
Wait, this movie has Gary Coleman in it? Playing a slave? And Obama jokes? I take it back, this does sound edgy and hilarious. I like to hope that the scene ends with Chuck Norris kicking Barack’s head off.

In the film, a rotund comedian named Rosie O’Connell makes an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor to promote her documentary, The Truth About Radical Christians. O’Reilly shows a clip, which opens with a pair of priests walking through an airport–as seen from pre-hijacking surveillance video–before boarding the airplane. Once onboard, they storm the cockpit using crucifixes as their weapon of choice. Get it, because Christians would never do anything violent. All those abortion doctors just blew up spontaneously.

And finally, if you were wondering the philosophy governing Zucker’s entire career, it’s summed up succinctly in the article:

"Why be original?" Zucker asks. "I’ve done that. It doesn’t work, like BASEketball."

I’m sure this’ll be a gem. Watch for a huge push from nuttier conservative groups to drive it to the top of the weekend box office, so they can prove that America really loves this stuff, and then for it to flop harder than Battlefield: Earth. At which point they’ll blame the puny man-animal liberals for stifling their expression.

(cross-posted to dansolomon.com)

A Moroccan-born Muslim woman, married to a French man, living in the east of Paris, with three French children, lost her appeal for citizenship on the grounds that she has adopted a radical practice of her religion, incompatible with essential values of the French community, particularly the principle of equality of the sexes. And, I mean, she does wear a burqa, and the balance of gender roles in her home sounds like it’s fucked-up. But if France is going to start declaring that it’s unFrench to act in opposition to the principle of equality of the sexes, there are an awful lot of citizenships they’ll need to revoke.

You could start with pretty much every major political figure who endorsed Nicolas Sarkozy over Segolene Royal in 2007 because she was too inexperienced, despite having almost the exact same resume- three ministerial posts, having served as a deputy to the National Assembly, and a former head of a regional government. That includes members of her own party who endorsed the male candidate over her. It’d definitely include the fellow Socialist senator who chose to endorse a right-wing dude because, while Royale may be pretty, the presidential election is not a beauty contest. And there’s no question that you’d have to deport the UMP minister who explained that her best chance of winning would come if her looks could help hide the fact that she’s a bitch.

You might have to start plucking random French citizens and inquiring why only 18% of the parliament is made up of women- behind such noted stalwarts of the principle of equality of the sexes as the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan. You could inquire as to why 60% of the unemployed in France are women, and 75% of part-time workers. Why, there are all sorts of things that might need to be cleared up if upholding the principle of equality of the sexes is now one of the major determinants in defining Frenchness.

Over and over again, people assert that they haven’t got a problem with Muslims at all, no, that’s not it- it’s just that they’re so unenlightened toward women! It’s a classic attempt to do some rhetorical judo- instead of saying we just don’t want those people here and looking like bigots, instead they get to play the grand feminists. And if they’re so concerned about women’s rights that they’ll, you know, deny them citizenship for wearing a burqa, then surely we can forgive them if they haven’t quite overcome the whole problem with equal pay, dismissing female politicians as unserious, keeping them at under 20% of business executives (or should it be "exec-cute-ives"?), dropping those power words like bitch whenever threatened, and so on… At least they’re paying lip service to invented obstacles toward an equal society, after all.

And I don’t mean to pick on the French. I like them! But you’ll see this attitude throughout the Western world. You’ll see it in new London mayor Boris Johnson, decrying the way women are treated in Afghanistan on one hand, while his chief of staff defends the fact that he fired the five top-ranked women in city hall on the grounds that women just aren’t as qualified. You’ll see it in every American preacher who weeps for women’s rights in the Muslim world but thinks that their American counterparts are baby factories. And if it bums you out and you’re hoping to find a place to get away from it, don’t count on the pony rides and free health care of France as a safe haven.

(cross-posted to dansolomon.com)