KIRK CAMERON'S SAVING CHRISTMAS easily jumps all the way to the very top of the "worst of" list for this year. This utterly insane, scarcely competent film is less of a commercial product and more of a glorified home video and a YouTube rant. It begins with smug boy himself, Kirk Cameron, talking straight to the audience for a good five minutes, about how Christmas is being attacked by sourpusses and the true meaning of the holiday has never been fully explained. So, he rattles off this scenario (the film is sickeningly meta) where his brother-in-law (writer/director/the real main actor Darren Doane) dared to not have fun at his own Christmas party and only Cameron can educate him on its values. In the span of a hour set only in the insides of a car, where the only visuals are a monotonous loop of shot-reverse shot and uncontrollable weather ruins the audio, Cameron proceeds to ramble out multiple deranged theories about the symbols of Christmas that could only have possibly come from someone who just took LSD and did some puff-puff-passing. I'm talking straight-up goofball material here, like how a Christmas tree is actually Jesus' wooden cross, or how Jesus was supposed to totally die upon his birth, or how St. Nick was kicking heretics' asses while motivated by dubstep, or how Christmas presents are like New Jerusalem. I'm not joking. It even gets more weird when Doane later includes a scene where the token black guy and his buddy proceed to go through an entire list of conspiracy theories but in a mocking manner, including insulting Fox News at one point. That pathetic cable channel is the only network willing to give you free publicity for your Christian crap, Cameron and Doane, and you proceed to shit on their open hands and say they are the crazy ones?
A baby wielding an iPhone could have created a better film in every department. The acting is certifiable garbage, with Cameron and Doane often coming across as serial killers. The camera routinely goes out of focus and shakes all about. The film quality jumps from piss-poor 30 fps, then to 24 fps for the Errol Morris-like lucid stories, then to full-on abuse of slow motion. There are several scenes where Doane fades out and then fades back in on the exact same image. One opening sequence is repeated wholesale later in the end. Continuity is beyond shot. The entire musical score is made up of production music. The animated opening credits were cribbed from someone else. And finally, to conclude the picture and stretch it out beyond belief, we have the most whitest, long-winded breaking dance scene ever shown in cinema, where the dancers have no sync yet continue to show off their atrocious skills and where the background kids constantly look bored and refuse to take part in singing an insidious Christmas rap tune. Though it was toxic and needs to be treated exactly like Chernobyl once on video, I was luckily enough to laugh my way through with this travesty. Because I have experienced what has to be death knell of the Christian film industry on its grandest stage.
FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5
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