{"id":17137,"date":"2015-11-10T14:16:38","date_gmt":"2015-11-10T19:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=17137"},"modified":"2016-05-14T01:13:43","modified_gmt":"2016-05-14T05:13:43","slug":"five-reasons-saving-christmas-is-the-best-movie-in-the-history-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/10\/five-reasons-saving-christmas-is-the-best-movie-in-the-history-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Reasons \u201cSaving Christmas\u201d is the Best Movie in the History of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Believe the hype. \u201cSaving Christmas\u201d is one of the most bafflingly awful movies ever made. And while I can kind of see the distorted logic behind making this kind of movie, nothing about it makes any kind of sense. Every time you think the movie almost understands where it\u2019s heading, it just completely flies off the rails and injects some truly remarkable moments of lunacy. Star and producer Kirk Cameron is so sure that his movie will finally convince people that Christmas is Christian and only Christian that he begins the movie with a monologue about his agenda for the movie. There are only about five characters in the movie, including one really creepy Santa, and they\u2019re all portrayed by a truly horrific cast of performers.<\/p>\n

\u201cSaving Christmas\u201d is much too certain about itself to be considered satire, and often much too campy to be taken seriously. Kirk looks dead certain he knows more than anyone about religion and Christmas, and doesn\u2019t mind flaunting it throughout the film, but then he literally ends the movie on our cast break dancing during a Christmas party. In a slow motion montage. Again, I\u2019m almost certain it\u2019s meant to be taken with a tongue in cheek, but I\u2019d wager Cameron intended the climax to be taken seriously, much like the message behind \u201cSaving Christmas.\u201d The movie is much too baffling and surreal to trash it completely, so I just couldn\u2019t help but itemize five observations about this oddity.<\/p>\n

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5. \u201cThey\u201d Want to Take Christmas Away<\/strong>
\nI\u2019m not sure who \u201cThey\u201d is, but They want to take Christmas away, and Kirk Cameron will be damned if they pull it off. Forget the fact that Christmas is the most popular holiday in the country, and that most people, even folks from other religions, celebrate it. \u201cThey\u201d want to take it away from us! And we can\u2019t let that happen, damn it! I\u2019m not even sure whose idea it was to feature Kirk Cameron monologuing in the beginning of the movie for no particular reason, but it\u2019s one of the most painful opening monologues, right up there with Criswell from \u201cPlan Nine.\u201d Cameron emphasizes what \u201cSaving Christmas\u201d is about. It\u2019s pretty much about him saving Christmas. From them. They want to take Christmas, and destroy it, and keep people from celebrating snowflakes, and Rudolph, and hot cocoa. Cocoa is the elixir of life. Who is \u201cThey\u201d? I guess only Cameron knows for sure.<\/p>\n

4. We\u2019re All Apparently Living a Story\u2014Even if \u201cSaving Christmas\u201d Lacks One<\/strong>
\nEvery story we\u2019re in is our lives, and every story we\u2019re living has a beginning, middle, and an end. The sad fact is that \u201cSaving Christmas\u201d really lacks anything resembling a coherent and cogent narrative structure at all. It has a scroll of the studio funding the movie, then features a prologue of Kirk Cameron rambling about Christmas, another scroll of a few studios that funded the movie, and then we\u2019re subjected to what is essentially a documentary about how Christmas is a Christian holiday, and all the facts about it originating from Paganism is just misinformation perpetrated by them. I\u2019m still not sure who \u201cthem\u201d and \u201cthey\u201d are, but they\u2019re out there trying to hurt Christmas. Even our main character Christian lacks a really interesting character conflict, merely failing to display the Christmas spirit. That\u2019s about as tough as life gets for the characters in this movie. \u201cSaving Christmas\u201d has a disjointed beginning, aimless middle, and an ending that just stops. It\u2019s not a resolution so much as Kirk Cameron rejoicing in how much smarter he is than us.<\/p>\n

3. Christmas is not a Christian holiday\u2014And Kirk Cameron doesn\u2019t Care<\/strong>
\nChristmas is really a Pagan holiday called Saturnalia which was outlawed by the Christian church, and then when they found it impossible to snuff out, it was adopted by the Christian church and turned in to what we know as Christmas. But those rotten Pagans are lying, says Kirk Cameron! Santa Claus is really a bad ass warrior who preached the word of God, and inexplicably devised the \u201cho ho ho\u201d laugh out of thin air. The trees are really about new life since, you know, trees have a lot of appearances and cameos in Christian mythology. Cameron never really goes out of his way to explain what wreathes, mistletoe, and stockings have to do with the birth of Christ, but who cares? You\u2019re just being a snob if you believe the real origin of Christmas. Rotten pagans.<\/p>\n

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2. Kirk Cameron Breaks Rule One in Making Movies<\/strong>
\nNever cast your family in your movies unless you\u2019re a Barrymore, or a Sheen, or one of the many dynasties of Hollywood. And come on, the Camerons are not exactly a dynasty of Hollywood actors. Calling Kirk Cameron an actor is already stretching the definition of the word, but he casts his sister to co-star. And no, not Candace from \u201cFull House,\u201d either. He casts his other sister Bridgette, who is intricately placed in the background and given little to no dialogue. What dialogue she does have is wooden, forced, and you can almost sense she\u2019s trying not to acknowledge the camera and crew. Darren Doane is no actor, either. He\u2019s barely a director, if we\u2019re going to get right down to it. Everything about \u201cSaving Christmas\u201d feels about as warm and wholesome as snow from a spray can. Doane spends most of his time fumbling through dialogue, and giving \u201coohs\u201d and \u201caahs\u201d whenever Kirk Cameron connects the dots for him about why Christmas is Christian, and awesome, and totally out of sight.<\/p>\n

1. Kirk Cameron loves Hot Cocoa, a lot\u2014almost sexually<\/strong>
\nI\u2019ve never seen hot cocoa so fetishized in a movie, before. Hell, I love Hot Cocoa, but Kirk Cameron lives by it. He almost needs it. Apparently to Kirk Cameron, Christmas is reliant on the very essence that is hot cocoa. In the awkward opening monologue that feels more like a recruitment video for a Christmas cult, Cameron mimes drinking hot cocoa from what is an obviously empty mug, at least five times. During the movie people are constantly walking around drinking the beverage, two side characters place great emphases on Hot Cocoa by sipping it amorously and using the mugs to cover their mouths, and in the grand finale, Cameron serves up cocoa to a large surrounding of children, pouring them the hot drink with wide smiles, spraying whipped cream in to their cups, and even spraying whipped cream in to the mouths of children as they celebrate the confection that is heated chocolate drink. To be honest, I\u2019m disappointed Cameron doesn\u2019t include a long winded story about how Hot Cocoa is directly correlated to the birth of Christ, and the manger. That would have been a wonderful display of creativity. Though, I\u2019m saddened there wasn\u2019t a scene of characters splashing around in the hot drink like a mud slide at Woodstock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Believe the hype. \u201cSaving Christmas\u201d is one of the most bafflingly awful movies ever made. And while I can kind of see the distorted logic behind making this kind of movie, nothing about it makes any kind of sense. Every time you think the movie almost understands where it\u2019s heading, it just completely flies off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[200,219,340,1255,898],"class_list":["post-17137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-list-junkies","category-pcthugs","tag-christmas","tag-comedy","tag-family","tag-holidays","tag-satire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17137"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20682,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17137\/revisions\/20682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}