An American Carol

David Zucker’s latest parody is an offensive and over-the-top right-wing spoof of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Michael Malone (Kevin Farley) is an award-winning documentarian noted for his anti-American values—in other words, he plays the right-wing vision of Michael Moore. The notorious filmmaker has been funded by al-Qaida to make a recruiting video for suicide bombers. This causes George S. Patton (Kelsey Grammer), George Washington (Jon Voight) and Trace Adkins (as himself) to take the movie man back through his life in an effort to show him the error of his ways. This is a mess, with gratuitous Sept. 11 imagery, highly exaggerated stereotypes of conservatives and liberals, and a ridiculous performance by Leslie Nielsen as Osama bin Laden. This is all intended to be funny. It isn’t.