(The following content is reran from the 2018 Christmas marathon on Letterboxd, as originally seen here.)
Against every better instinct I have, I'm starting this review by playing nice. The basic theory underlining Kirk Cameron's arguments in Saving Christmas is not inherently flawed or condemnable. Across multiple narrated vignettes, Kirk argues against worries about the commercialization and secularization of Christmas by finding avenues to link activities and iconography commonly associated with the holiday back to Jesus. He's effectively saying one shouldn't lose heart in the validity of their faith when they see trappings of Santa Claus and mistletoe everywhere, as a good Christian will find ways of reaffirming their connection to God and Jesus in the everyday. If you place sufficient value on your spiritual life, the idea holds merit. Make your practice a personal matter, maintain a mindful attitude surrounding its tenants, and find strength through reflection on what you believe and why.
Thing about theories, though: they can only remain pure, untainted notions in perfect isolation. When Kirk Cameron puts this theory of argument into practice in Saving Christmas, he uses it to spin baffling nonsense about how Adam needed to put the forbidden fruit back on the Tree of Knowledge to get right with God, so Jesus going up on a wooden cross was a symbolic token to the same effect, thus turning all Christmas trees into unused crosses representing the salvation of mankind. He rambles on about how the historical Saint Nicholas punching a heretic at some ancient holy conference proves the current incarnation of Santa Claus is a crusader for the faith and some kind of badass warrior preacher. Christmas presents become the New Jerusalem, a somewhat interesting theological discussion about the relationship between Jesus' swaddling cloth and the Shroud of Turin becomes reason to not bemoan the lack of a nativity scene, and nutcrackers become Herod's baby-killing soldiers, now transformed into defenders of the holy way. To Kirk Cameron, finding the sacred in the secular seemingly means pulling up little bits and bobs of trivia from hagiography and apocryphal doctrine to justify not changing one's ways or attitudes in the slightest. The application falls just a tiny bit short of the theory.
Now, this is all VERY badly presented. Saving Christmas boats a bland visual style and an incredibly boring camera. We have to listen to Kirk Cameron put on his best William Shatner impression, stretching out every single monologue to three or four times its necessary length. He and his costars act by scrunching up their faces and wiggling from one weird expression to the next in a pantomime of what they think sudden enlightenment looks like. There are completely unnecessary digressions to Not Chris Rock doing his standup routine, a conspiracy theorist rambling on about Area 52 and poison in the hot cocoa, and a protracted breakdancing sequence towards the end set to the most repetitive sounding electronic dance hip-hop cover you could squeeze out of Angels We Have Heard on High. When the movie DOES deign to focus on its main conflict of Kirk talking to his brother in the car, the visual flairs it offers to keep the monologues interesting alternate between lazily floating through caves and Christmas tree lots, and scruffy-dirty-bearded-tavern-scripture-quoting-triphop-scored-Santa-beatdowns. It is two scenes from a real movie stretched out to forty minutes, with the remaining half-hour filled by inhuman attempts at comedy.
Still... it is not inherently loathsome. Horrendously executed, amateurishly argued, insulting on multiple levels, but not hateful like God's Not Dead. I INTENDED to go the tiniest bit easy on Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas and give it one single, solitary star, as the smallest offer of mercy. "You're completely bugnuts, Kirk Cameron, and I don't agree with a single thing you've to say. Power to you to waste your money saying it in a movie, tho," sort of thing.
Then Kirk Cameron got to justifying conspicuous consumption and holiday avarice. Jesus IS the reason for the season, after all, and because Jesus took a material form when God sent him to earth, we should all celebrate his birth by spending and hoarding and glutting ourselves to excess. MORE materialism means MORE material stuff, and the MORE material stuff you have in your life, the MORE Jesus you have in your heart, or... something.
The rest of Kirk's arguments at least have either sufficient theological merit to get a pass in isolation, or are harmless enough to pass with a bewildered, "believe what you wanna believe, man..." This, though? This is straight up "the very things people claim run against the spirit of the holiday and Christ's fundamental teachings are actually virtues we should indulge in without restraint, because I did a little bit of wordplay." It is mindbogglingly misguided at best, willfully hard-hearted and selfish at worst. The whole idea retroactively strips the rest of the film's arguments of their scarce value, as it reveals the total lack of thought and introspection behind their conception. All we have here is a mouth set into a slab flesh, blathering away with the sole aim of vindicating its own capacity to speak and eat without shame.
Having seen all seven films, the question still remains: Why WERE there so many Christian films released in 2014? We know Kirk Cameron put out his film because Kirk Cameron is a crazy person who honestly thought telling non-believers their secular trappings are actually religious out one side of his mouth while telling the faithful they should abandon their morals and mindlessly feast would somehow earn him critical acclaim or substantial profit. But why did the world see the production and distribution of not only this many films, but the wide-release and heavier-than-average media coverage of the same? Is there any linking factor between the impetus to create Son of God, God's Not Dead, Noah, Heaven Is For Real, Left Behind, Exodus: Gods and Kings, and Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas?
After many hours of consideration, internal debate, and fine-tuned analysis, I come to the conclusion 2014 saw the release of so many Christian films because multiple unrelated entities saw an opportunity to service/exploit a monied crowd whose opinions on the larger culture included a belief that they experience undue suppression in the media, and all happened to complete and circulate their products at around the same time. Some did this out of genuine belief, some did this to fulfill an artistic impulse, some wanted to turn a profit and nothing else, and some are Kirk Cameron. Either way, an abnormally wide-spread response to a potentially profitable business venture handily explains the whole phenomenon. Shocking revelations, I know. Kirk Cameron's the one who stopped talking in code and waffled on about how the liberals want Christmas to be more PC and keep Christians from practicing in public. Blame him for the blunt, cynical verdict here.
0.5/5
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