David Zucker, the director and writer who helped create "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun" franchise has called on Hollywood's tiny but tightly knit Republican A-list crowd to help him make a broad yet unusually right-leaning political satire titled "An American Carol."Now there's a tasteful tribute. But why no role for O.J. Simpson?
The low-budget indie co-stars Emmy winner Kelsey Grammer with Oscar-winner Jon Voight, cinema icon Dennis Hopper, model-heiress Paris Hilton and frequent Zucker stooge Leslie Nielsen in minor roles. Release is planned sometime by year's end; the director suggested Friday, Sept. 12, to coincide with the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Part of me wants to give Zucker the benefit of the doubt here -- the man has made some deeply funny movies in the past -- but he had his chance to show us that he could mix humor and politics when he did some anti-Democrat ads in 2006, and the results were...not inspiring:
The line "History has taught us that evil needs to be confronted, not appeased" has no place in a David Zucker film, unless Leslie Nielsen is saying it while Ricardo Montalban gives him a wedgie. And if you have any doubt that the new movie will be more of the same, Politico's plot summary should disabuse you of the notion:
In a climactic scene, [Michael] Moore's stand-in (here named "Michael Malone") finds political clarity at the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center while the admonishing ghost of George Washington (played by Voight) hovers nearby.Caveat: If he works in a sequence where the next 9/11 is foiled by a heroic autopilot, I'll forgive everything else.
