What the Dickens? This 'Carol's' Discord Sickens

"An American Carol," a flamingly right-wing comedy, calls to mind the kind of "satire" performed at the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington. It's antic and energetic, all right, but so broad and toothless that it winds up just being lame.

"Carol" (which opened yesterday but was not screened for critics in advance) roughly tracks the Dickens Christmas classic. A Twinkie-gorging documentary filmmaker obviously based on Michael Moore (in case you still don't get it, the character is named Michael Malone) is visited by three famous ghosts who show him the error of his peace-loving, health-insurance-demanding, America-hating ways.

The ghosts -- Gen. George S. Patton, George Washington and John F. Kennedy -- literally slap and punch some sense into Malone (played by Kevin Farley, Chris's brother) to make him understand what's at stake in the fight against terrorism.

Along the way, "Carol" director David Zucker (of the "Airplane!" and "Naked Gun" movies) takes potshots at college professors, lesbians, gay men, pacifists, Jimmy Carter, Rosie O'Donnell and George Clooney. When all else fails, as it often does, he resorts to slapstick. Would it be too PC to suggest that drowning a bunch of sick and handicapped kids, as the movie does, isn't outrageous comedy, it's just desperate and cruel?

The fun of "American Carol," such as it is, comes in spotting the famous and semi-famous. Longtime Zucker favorite Leslie Nielsen is the story's narrator. Kelsey Grammer and Jon Voight play the ghosts of Patton and Washington. Dennis Hopper turns up as a crazed judge gunning down zombie ACLU lawyers as they remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom. Country singer Trace "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" Adkins plays the Angel of Death and also, weirdly enough, country singer Trace "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" Adkins. And Paris Hilton, in the one role she was born to play, plays Paris Hilton.

"Carol's" principal notion is that terrorism is evil (duh) and that liberals just don't get it. So Patton whisks Malone off to 1938 Munich, where Neville Chamberlain is literally shining the shoes of, and singing "Kumbaya" with, Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini. In another just-short-of-mortifying sequence, they travel to the Deep South to encounter happy-talking slaves (David Alan Grier and Gary Coleman, among others) who are still in bondage because Lincoln didn't have the backbone to fight the Civil War.

Surely, smug Hollywood liberals could use a good cinematic noogie. But this cartoon-quality satire doesn't provide much of a comeuppance. "Carol" is likely to offend not so much one's liberal propriety (if any) but one's sense of humor.

An American Carol (83 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for rude and irreverent content, and for language and brief drug material.