Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas

For those of us who have watched Kirk Cameron pontificate on the wonders of the banana, or read his musings on the legitimacy of the existence of fire-breathing dragons, we know that Kirk Cameron himself is comedy gold. One might expect more hilarity from Cameron in Saving Christmas, but Cameron actually intentionally tries to build a comedy here, and the result is an unfunny, unfocused, interminable mess.

The film begins with an uncomfortable scene involving Kirk Cameron sitting in a chair, lecturing at the audience. "They don't want us to love Christmas," Cameron declares authoritatively, never bothering to define exactly who "they" are. Cameron drones on for several more minutes, and at this point in the film, I heard a kid in the back of the theater yawn loudly—perhaps an audible protest that this film would not be the exciting romp promised on the poster.

Finally, the film cuts away from Kirk Cameron, and we see several characters enjoying a Christmas party. But then we see Kirk Cameron again, the film freezes, and we hear Kirk Cameron narrating about himself: "That's me—Kirk!" More lecturing ensues.

Eventually, a character by the name of Christian (almost as clever as "Josh Wheaton"), a Christian himself, despondently finds his way to a car, apparently disillusioned by the materialism of Christmas. Enter Kirk Cameron, who enters the vehicle and does what he does best—more lecturing.

The majority of the film takes place in this car as Kirk lectures to Christian, with occasional cutaways to Biblical imagery. Cameron tries to make the case that Christmas traditions, such as celebratory trees and gifts, all somehow originated with Christianity, not paganism. (Never mind the fact that ancient paganism predates Christianity.) "Last time I checked, God created the winter solstice!" is the type of asinine reasoning you'll hear from Kirk Cameron throughout the film. Cameron's facts are both dubious and sparse, and his connections are spurious—but Christian is nevertheless invariably blown away by Kirk Cameron's apparently amazing insight.

Perhaps aware that interminable lecturing on its own would be unbearable for an audience, the film provides characters with quirky personalities in an effort to break up the tedium. In particular, we are treated to a scene back in the house of two characters rambling schizophrenically as they drink hot chocolate. It has nothing to do with Christian's story, it makes the movie feel unfocused, it goes on for far too long, and if my theater is any indication, it is not funny at all. In fact, there was dead silence in my theater throughout the entire run of this "comedy" film.

The film ends with a dance sequence that feels like it lasts ten minutes, as well as multiple, gratuitous blooper scenes—I suppose for no reason other than to pad the running time. Just when you think it's finally over, we see Kirk Cameron again, and he continues to lecture the audience—this time about how materialism is just fine, because Jesus came to us in a material body, after all.

One gets the impression that Kirk Cameron actually started reading his own Bible, was disturbed by what he found (such as Jesus' instruction to "go sell your possessions and give to the poor"), and produced this film as a desperate justification for his own hypocrisy.

At my theater, nobody laughed, and nobody stayed for the end credits. This purported comedy film fails at every level. If you're really looking for a laugh, go back and take a look at what Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort have to say about the glorious design of the banana.

I barely survived the trailer. I have no idea how people paid money to see this movie. As a Christian, I have to beg Christian filmmakers to stop preaching to the converted by writing atheists and agnostics as idiotic, hateful, anti-Christian monsters. Your persecution complex in a country comprised almost entirely of Christians is laughable and only further isolates you from those you hope to convert.

Kirk Cameron could have made a movie that's actually about family and the true meaning of Christmas. Instead, he wanted to create a polemic against the people he's imagined that are trying to prevent him from calling it Christmas. It's just sad. Please stop making these terrible films. You're embarrassing all of us.

It's no secret that, on both the mainstream and independent circuit of film, Christian cinema has been a big focus in 2014. Films like "Heaven is for Real," "Noah," "Son of God," and next month's "Exodus: Gods and Kings" have all catered to the faithful in some way and have gone on to achieve uniformly strong financial numbers as well. The independent circuit has seen big hits like "God's Not Dead" and marginal successes like "Left Behind," "Mom's Night Out," "Persecuted," and "When the Game Stands Tall," all of which finding ways to connect with their target audience in at least recognizing their faith in the cinema, a place where it's fair to believe the religious demographic has felt ignored. Former Television star and devout, outspoken Christian Kirk Cameron has now thrown his hat in the ring, latching on to this newfound trend, and effectively making not only the worst film of its genre but the worst film of 2014. "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas" is a disjointed mess, structurally pathetic and morally bankrupt as we watch scenes interwoven with little coherency, dialog written and delivered in its most wooden form, and wonderful morals to teach our children, like "materialism is good."

The film begins with Cameron sitting in a blatantly artificial living room, decorated with more Christmas lights and flair than Macy's after Thanksgiving passes, giving us an introduction to the film at hand. He states the biggest problem with the Christmas season is the "people" who want to segregate the spread of faith and good cheer to the private homes of those who celebrate the holiday or simply want the holiday done away with all together. He rambles on for about three minutes as the introduction sets the perfect theme for this film; it's a circumventing project that never results in a specific or thoughtfully-articulated point.

We cut to a Christmas party held by Cameron's sister, where a Santa has been hired, the tree has been erected, the house has been decorated, a feast has been prepared, and everyone is in an incorruptibly cheery mood; everyone except Cameron's brother-in-law Christian (director Darren Doane), who is seen moping around the house before quietly slipping away to his car. Kirk follows Christian and learns the materialism of Christmas bothers him immensely, as he watches kids beg for toys they won't play with in three weeks and parents max out their credit cards, giving way to the materials and the illuminating tree in the center of the room, and all while neglecting the baby Jesus in the manger, who is the ultimate "reason for the season."

Cameron begins to initiate flashbacks to biblical times to "justify" why we have the Christmas traditions that we do. However, it's not enough that we get a history lesson told from the enormously biased lens of Cameron, but in a dodgy and muddled manner. Cameron gets absorbed in the significance of baby Jesus's swaddling cloth and the original mean-spirited roots of Saint Nicholas (something that will undoubtedly scare and confuse children), never addressing Christian's true distaste for the holiday season. Kirk meanders for about forty minutes, talking himself in incoherent and redundant circles, never addressing Christian's questions in a way that we can extract counterpoints or citing Christmas's Pagan and cultist roots (if you're going to show Saint Nicholas as a brute, at least address the backstory).

Interjected in these ridiculously dry biblical flashbacks and in-car dialogs are exaggerated characters masquerading as likable people with personalities drawn so wide they are desperately unfunny. We see two party guests discuss "The War on Christmas," relating it to several other conspiracy theories that just feels like a soundoff of paranoia. We get a few minutes of dead-end, annoying conversation and some of the worst displays of acting this year before it's back to the car for a half-assed lecture.

"Saving Christmas" ends with an abhorrent dance number to an incorrigible techno/rap hybrid, with members of the cast obnoxiously dancing and doing slow-motion choreography together. We end things with a perfunctory voice-over with Cameron before we're greeted by almost ten minutes of closing credits showing bloopers, outtakes, and a barrage of other things padding this project to just barely being feature- length (eighty minutes). If my plot synopsis sounds like it has not made any sense, then I have effectively lived up to the structure and the narrative pace of this particular film.

Just by comparing the full-length film to its trailer, you can tell "Saving Christmas" was Cameron's last minute idea to cash in on the Christian cinema craze of the year. The trailer for the film talks about how Christmas has been corrupted by materialism and the political correctness of the holiday. However, Cameron blatantly contradicts his thesis when he states during the closing monologue that "materialism is good" because Christmas is about "God taking possession of a material body." Aside from ushering in a pathetic excuse for a moral at the end of a film about Christmas, the cardinal sins committed here run amuck: a sloppy narrative hodgepodge of biblical flashbacks, inept lecturing, and pointless filler clearly padding a small runtime, atrocious acting on all fronts, a desperate attempt at "staying hip" and keeping the attention of the audience by throwing in a hip-hop dance number, contemptible morals, and failure to address or even stick to a cogent thesis. Kirk Cameron and company should be required to volunteer at local charities or help cater several breakfasts with Santa to make up for such a yuletide atrocity.

This movie is so, so utterly wretched, not only in its execution but also in its conception.

Just from a filmmaking perspective, it's extremely shoddy. Many portions look like home movies. A large part of the film is Cameron sitting in a car talking to a friend, and that's not interesting to watch. "Comedy" scenes have nothing to do with the rest of the story, and are creepily unfunny. A bizarre dance scene at the end is out of place and seems inserted to extend the time. Cameron's presence here is smarmy and smug; he lays out his spiritual views and his friend just gushes about how right Cameron is and how he's helped him see the light and love Christmas and all that.

A bigger problem is the misinformation that Cameron spews so authoritatively, some of which runs counter to the Bible and to known history. To give a partial list:

Cameron claims that Joseph and Mary were hiding from soldiers sent by Herod to kill all babies being born. But the Gospel of Matthew says the soldiers were sent by Herod AFTER Jesus was born, when Herod was tipped off by the visiting Wise Men that a King of the Jews had been born. Joseph and Mary then took Jesus and did the Flight into Egypt to save the child's life.

Cameron insists the Nativity took place in a cave because the manger was made of stone. No source claims the manger was stone, or that the Nativity took place in a cave. Matthew says it was in Joseph's house in Bethlehem, Luke says it was a stable. This seems like a post-hoc attempt to link the Nativity with the Resurrection.

Cameron says frankincense and myrrh were "funeral spices." Although myrrh had been used in Egyptian mummification, frankincense was not, and both were much more commonly used as a sacred incense in Hebrew temples.

He goes into detail about Saint Nicholas' life, presenting it as fact, but in truth very little is known for sure about him, and some Christian leaders openly suggest that he may never have existed. All that is known for sure is that someone named Nicholas was at one point the Bishop of Myra; everything else is unsure and in the territory of legend and myth.

Legend has it that during the Council of Nicaea, Nicholas angrily struck Arius in the face for saying that Jesus and God were separate. Cameron depicts Nicholas savagely and brutally attacking Arius and beating him with a shepherd's crook, a scene many Christians found objectionable.

Cameron depicts the historical Saint Nicholas climbing on a sleigh to deliver presents to children, something he never did in any legend. He also claims that Saint Nicholas is the gift-giver everywhere, also not supported by history. Some areas give gifts on Christmas, others at Epiphany, others on St. Nicholas' day, and in some areas the gifts are delivered by someone else entirely, such as La Befana in Italy, St. Basil in Greece, the Yule Lads in Iceland, St. Lucy in Croatia, and multiple countries have the gifts delivered by the Magi, angels, or the Christ Child himself.

Cameron says Nicholas was "sainted," when in reality Nicholas was never canonized. His sainthood was more by word-of-mouth.

Cameron makes an elaborate rationalization for Christmas trees relating to the crucifixion and to the Garden of Eden; this connection is very convoluted and labored, and doesn't hold water. And he doesn't address the parts of Jeremiah which some feel are a commandment against Christmas trees.

He claims that gifts piled under the Christmas tree are perfectly acceptable as they are reminiscent of the skyline of Jerusalem. By that reasoning, they could also be the skyline of Babylon or Rome, and could represent oppression and slavery. It's a poorly considered analogy that should never have been included.

I'm sure I'm missing other bits, but I'm not inclined to go back and watch it again. It's unsettling to see Cameron stand and claim that it's OK to be materialistic at Christmas, because that's when God came to the Earth in material form. (That's pretty much a direct quote.) Never mind the many passages where the Bible tells us to set aside worldly things and not be materialistic! He exhorts viewers to eat themselves to bursting and buy the biggest ham and the richest butter....but isn't gluttony considered a deadly sin?

At no point does he address such issues as helping the poor, feeding the hungry, giving to charity, volunteering, or anything. One is left with the impression that one should only think of one's self and one's immediate family and friends. Does Cameron remember Jesus' command to his followers to give away all they had to the poor? Somehow, I don't think so.

Cameron gives the impression of someone who read parts of the Bible long ago, but rather than fit his life to the Bible, he is fitting the Bible to the life he wants to lead, and making one justification after another without ever bothering to double-check if he's remembering it correctly, or if there's something in the Bible that disagrees with him. It's clear he considers himself a better Christian than you. Many of the faithful have been turned off by this movie, some even going so far as to declare it blasphemous and call Cameron a false prophet. I'm not so sure I would agree, but at the same time, this movie does have some value of showing how even a faithful Christian can fall victim to the sins of pride and arrogance. It's clear that Cameron's ego was in overdrive, and this movie is not as much a testament to God as it is an expression of Cameron's arrogance.

After seeing all the negative reviews of this film, I had to check it out. I heard about Kirk Cameron's up voting campaign on Rotten Tomatoes and the ensuing backlash from atheists and so on. But I wanted to see if the film was really that bad. It is. It's really awful, probably the most awkward, uncomfortable hour of my life. Troll 2 was funny on a So-bad-it's-good level, so was The Room. But this is just painfully bad. This film aggravates me on so many levels. But I want to leave out the B.S religious side of it, there's more than enough reviews, even from Christians, attacking this film for it's head scratching Evangelical nonsense. Instead, I'd like to focus on an aspect of the film that I feel has been overlooked, the historical "facts" that Cameron pulls out of his arse. I'm a history buff, and this film made me so angry. Cameron expects us to believe that St. Nicholas got so angry with Arius that he dragged him out into the snow and beat the crap out of him with a staff! He did no such thing. As one of the bishops who signed the Nicene Creed, St. Nicholas got into an argument concerning the divinity of Christ and punched the Christian presbyter in the face.

Then there's the barking mad argument about the pagan roots of Christianity which Cameron dismisses, claiming that everything was created by God and therefore everything to do with Christmas can be traced back to God, even the Nutcracker! And on it goes... The arguments make no sense, the acting is horribly stilted and the 'comedy' is painfully bad. It's such an incoherent, rambling mess from "Crocoduck" Cameron that by the time he's dancing and doing the worm, you just have no idea what you're watching any more. Worst movie ever made in the history of motion pictures.