Movie Review: "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas"

Merry Christmas, you horrors of the night! Want to know what I thought about Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas...? (I put off writing about it for a bit; I thought I might draw a cartoon about it. But nah.)

Yes, Virginia: The Gil-Monster saw the lowest rated film on iMDB ever- AND HE SAW IT IN THE THEATER;* BOW DOWN BEFORE ME, JOR-EL!! Hearing that this beast was playing at the local Regal outlet, I saw it as a personal challenge! So my wife and I went on a cold Monday matinee to inhabit the theater with one other person sitting back and center- to make sure no one was going to set fire to the screen, I suppose.

The movie- and I use that term pan-galactically loosely as it's barely over an hour, even with credits and outtakes- opens with Kirk Cameron sitting at an easy chair. Sporting a gruesome beard that could only accompany a GPS-enabled ankle bracelet, Kirk espouses the joys of both Christmas and hot cocoa to an empty theater (save for me, my wife, and an old guy sitting back and center to make sure no one was going to set fire to the screen, I suppose). Exotic locations, like his real-life sister's living room and the interior of a SUV parked in a driveway, are where we are transported through the magic of film.

We spend a glut of the running time in the latter as it's where Christian, Kirk's fake brother-in-law, sulks because he, like a lot of people, gets sad at Christmas because that damn tree in his living room and that fat shitheel in the red suit steals Jesus' thunder- unlike a lot of people. In a moment that deserves to be in every horror film, Kirk climbs into the passenger seat and plays Six Degrees Of Jesus Of Nazareth with everything Christmas-y. For example, Christmas tree lots are just like the Garden Of Eden because of all the trees in them- only with a lot less warmth, nudity and animals. Instead of doing the logical thing- which is gunning the engine, driving headlong into a tree, and casting this former fucking conservative child-star homophobe FUCK out his windshield- Christian agrees with every one of Kirk's batshit bonkers allegories. Returning inside, he slides headfirst into the presents and a dance party ensues. There you go.

As short as this film is, it's also astonishingly PADDED. The camerawork is atrocious, with long slow-motion pans of Christian and his "wife" filling out the denouement, and a rock where the baby Jesus was born is dissolved to twice in the same scene.  And the message... ugh. The message of this film is that so long as you can tie whatever you're doing to the Bible, it's all right. Be as materialistic as you like, says Kirk- really- because Christmas Day was the day that Jesus took material form. Uh-huh? UH-HUH...? There are even more slow pans on the turkey and the feast and Kirk's sister's fine china to emphasize this. And even the outtakes suck.

Irony: one of Christian's beefs with Christmas is the money squandered on expensive one-off gifts, instead of food and clothing for the needy. Never once does he complain about the million or so spent nurturing Kirk Cameron's insanity with a selfish ego vehicle. There's a reason Rotten Tomatoes is tearing him a new one... 0/5 notions that a worm's-eye-view of the presents beneath the tree resembles the skyline of the future city of Jerusalem.
 

...Speaking of worms, here's the first-born Seaver child busting one to "Angels We Have Heard On High", hip-hop style. Note Kirk's "O" face what with the floor being the most physical contact his crotch has received in years.


*The Merritt family would like it known that the money that would have gone towards theater admission to Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas was instead donated to the starving children of the city of Panem; i..e., given to the first week gross of Mockingjay, Part 1. We felt Kirk Cameron could never be so gauche as to actually charge people to hear his message, given its importance.