My fiance and I went to see it yesterday at a 3:30 PM show in Newark, Delaware. I expected we would be the only ones in there, but the back half of the theater (where we were sitting) filled up by the time the movie started.

It was an older crowd.

I went to see it yesterday in NYC @ 4:30. I thought I would be the only one in the theater, but was pleasantly surprised to find about 40-50 people in the audience. Also stunned to hear chuckles and downright laughs throughout. Best part is how it skewers Hollywood!

I live in the Sac-Metro area of No Cal (over 1 million people) and the huge Century chain that gets ALL of the big new movies skipped over it so I had to truck about 23 miles to see a 1:15 matinee (only $7.50 instead of the usual 11). The room (seriously, are they really "theaters" anymore?) I saw it in, holds about 130 to 150 and was 3/4 full. The laughter was sporadic but you have to remember, as the hub of government in Cali, Sacramento is filled with humorless wonks and beaurocrats (some 150,000 and growing everyday under "The Governator"). That said, I liked it but am glad to have not taken my 13 year old. Kids are cussing ALOT in the movie. It's very bold in its pro-America sentiment but Zucker is still very secular. The loudest the crowd got was when it was over and about 15 or 20 folks applauded for about 10 seconds.

summary: An American Carol is a good flick and we should encourage more in the same direction by making the thing a hit. You will DEFFINITELY see and hear things you'll NEVER see or hear in ANY OTHER Hollywood movie. Not that Hollywood had anything to do with it. Just leave the kids at home.

Okay, I will now take questions from anyone who doesn't think that was detailed enough...

A big marketing push and a wide release netted it a sorry 9th place. In fact, Religilous nearly outearned it (by $300K) despite being in less than 1/3 of the theaters.

Why aren't conservatives successful at anything in the art realm? Outside of hillbilly music, it's slim pickens. I don't think McCain or Palin can play any background songs at their speeches without pissing off an artist or evoking a donation to the DNC/Planned Parenthood/ACLU.

Correction:

conservatives (aren't)successful at anything in the (nazi,marxist,racist, anti-America) art realm.

The fact that condescending pieces of crap like you with your hate for anything pro-American, like "hillbilly music", infests hollywierd and EVERYTHING it vomits up, is the reason why most of America doesn't even go to movies anymore.

Put that in your crackpot pipe and smoke it all the way to your Cuban paradise. A place An American Carol, very competently, shot to hell.

Why aren't conservatives successful at anything in the art realm? Outside of hillbilly music, it's slim pickens.

That is possibly the most provincial, the most idiotic, the most vapid statement I've read on Wizbang for several years. And that includes Wizbang Blue.

Good movie, too bad the people who should go and see he are not

we saw the movie too. i thought it was GREAT and surprisingly emotional at times. (of course, i'm a sap.) it's very funny and hits many, many issues. my favorite part was the former hippie college professors' indoctrination singing.

Why aren't conservatives successful at anything in the art realm? Outside of hillbilly music, it's slim pickens.

Admit it, jp2. You are really just a hillbilly at heart who has a special hankerin' for Slim Pickens.

But don't call jp2 a bigot

Don't bother coming up with a list of names for people like jp2. No answer would ever be good enough. Seriously, true story, when I was about 22 years old I worked in a law firm with a really liberal and obnoxious 40 something woman. I mention the age because I am now 42 and when I think back on how childish she was at that age it blows my mind. Anyway, one day she was talking about how conservatives didn't have a sense of humor. In a very nice, nonconfrontational way I said "Bob Hope is a Republican." Period. That is all I said. Simple statement of fact. She unloaded on me and on Bob Hope! She said he was old and not funny. She was such a hater that she could not even admit that Bob Hope was a good comedian. Unbelievable. People like that will not ever admit that any Republican is as good an actor or artist as a Democrat. Charleton Heston? Jimmy Stewart? John Wayne? Not good enough.

As for current actors -- Kelsey Grammer. Many thought he was pretty talented when he was on Cheers and Frasier. That was before they knew he wasn't one of them. I think he actually came out of the conservative closet after 9/11 because a good friend was killed on one of the planes that went down.

And people like Jon Voight or James Woods or Gary Sinise? They were considered talented before they showed their true colors. The truth is that we may never know who all the conservatives in Hollywood are. It is still enough of a stigma that I would bet many are still in the closet. We could list people like Angie Harmon and Jon Cryer and Robert Duvall and James Caan and Jerry Bruckheimer and Rick Schroeder, but why bother? Anyone who would post such a childish comment is just like that co-worker of mine 20 years ago who could not bring herself to admit that Bob Hope was a good comedian since he was Republican. You'd do better talking to a wall.

It's simple. Conservatives (and most libertarians) are real people. Actors pretend to be real people.

His 10:1 assumption is charitable, though. Creative people and people in the entertainment industry lean much further left than Joe Sixpack despite how much more taxes the Democratic Party would have them pay than the GOP--for whatever that's worth.

This movie, by the way, is supposed to be a real piece of shit. Michael Moore is good at making dishonest propaganda, whereas these idiots are not good at satirizing Michael Moore. As for conservatives who actually make decent movies, rather than just star in them, apart from Clint Eastwood we have... umm... Vincent Gallo? Whatever, who cares about Hollywood's political divisions?

I really liked the movie, but if I were a liberal I would definitely think it was a piece of excrement.

Own up then. Name me some successful artists in (music, drama, painters) that are hardcore conservatives.

(Hint, jp2: The celebs listed below are probably more successful than you, in whatever you do.)

http://www.swocr.com/conservative_celebrities1.htm

BTW, jp2, hardcore isn't the right word, and you know it. Conservatives understand tradition in the U.S., the same kind of tradition you feel is a threat to this nation. Your opinion toward Palin will always be biased because she is already successful politically, as a woman. Your deepest desire is to see her fail, and for no other reason.

P.S. Britney Spears doesn't know what she is and they can't spell her name right.

This isn't an A movie nor does it try to be. It's not even a Team America. BUT it does seem to accomplish what it set out to do, and it does elicit the kinds of responses one would expect from the folks it skewers.

Damn, I am still reeling with the Mexicans in Afghanistan reference!

See it, laugh and giggle and no need to applaud. If it makes PH, mantis, jp2 and JFO rant and rave, so much the better.

I think jp2 should have stopped after:

A big marketing push and a wide release netted it a sorry 9th place. In fact, Religilous nearly outearned it (by $300K) despite being in less than 1/3 of the theaters.

Everything after that was drivel, but those were the simple facts, whether you like them or don't like them. I would also add that the budget for Religilous was reported as $2.5 million, while the budget for American Carol was $20 million. I guessing that domestic box office will come in under $10 million for both movies, 4 times the budget of 1, half the budget of the other.

Has anyone considered the possibility that the box office figures may have been falsified to further the liberal Hollywood agenda?

They could have just "misplaced" a decimal point, which would have put An American Carol at 34 million, the #1 position for the weekend.

Or maybe, they just shaved a few million off of AAC and "reassigned" it to each of the films they claim outperformed it.

Sorry, that should have been "38 million" above. AAC's box office was "estimated" at 3.8 million, not 3.4.

jp2

I appears you have missed Hollywood Establishment's award show where Hollywood Establishment 'artists' gave their Riefenstahl Oscar to Michael Moore.

As for Hollywood's definition of 'artists', an artist in Hollywood is anyone who complies with the groupthink and when one is desperate to gain membership into Hollywood's VIP room one will betray every ideal supporting creative expression by giving into the groupthink.

This is why Hollywood has killed the artist because an artist must be free to express, however in Hollywood if you do freely express then you are deemed 'right-winger' simply because you refuse to conform to the groupthink.

Groupthink isn't artistic pursuit, it's useful idiots wanting to be famous celebrities.

What is great about An American Carol was not the slapstick comedy, it is great because it is the very counter-culture, anti-Establishment that Hollywood Establishment pretends itself to be.

Hollywood is the Establishment, Man! Time to join our counter-revolution against the Establishment...go see An American Carol and stick it to the Establishment.

Has anyone considered the possibility that the box office figures may have been falsified to further the liberal Hollywood agenda?

Box office receipt reporting is down to a science at this point because money is involved. Studios get a firmly negotiated portion of all box office receipts, so this being wrong would require either repeated misprints that would be quickly discovered and revealed (and would be a big story by this morning at the latest) or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of criminal fraud on the part of several national theater chains.

When many people die or nation changing events occur, conspiracy theories are bound to come into play (e.g. Waco, 9/11) as people try and make sense of a complex and traumatic situation with imperfect information. But using conspiracy theories to explain a poor opening weekend on a movie? Please. You're lowering the bar even further.

This is why Hollywood has killed the artist because an artist must be free to express, however in Hollywood if you do freely express then you are deemed 'right-winger' simply because you refuse to conform to the groupthink.

"Message" entertainment on the right (this movie, "The 1/2 Hour New Hour" ) and the left ("Rendition", "Lions for Lambs") tend to generate terrible returns. Documentaries can occasionally buck this trend, but fictional works with name actors generally cost too much to make and have too little appeal to the general public. Of course, you can get the fringe on either side to go see these movies, but that's a relatively small market. The one advantage left-leaning movies have is that they tend to do better foreign box office numbers.

"box office receipts and profitabilty that kills the artist."

This assumes that box-office receipts determine talent and artistry; there are quite a number of people who break big box office records without having an iota of talent or artistry yet are perceived as talented and artistic nevertheless.

There are very few actor's left in Hollywood who are actually actors, most of them are overpaid eye-candy salespeople who have conned audiences into believing they are crafted actors.

It's along the lines of what David Mamet observed in the late 1990's about screenwriters, there are no talented screenwriters in Hollywood anymore because all they know how to write are scripts for eye-candy acting.

Syn, I read Joe's first paragraph (in full, not as you quoted it) as a defense of "An American Carol" as a true work of cinematic artistry and craftsmanship, the likes of which may be killed by lack of profitability.

Are you trying to claim that AAC is something less than a great work of art?

It is pretty sad that you guys think Hollywood executives care about anything but money. If AN AMERICAN CAROL generated anything like real income, they'd make thirty more of them next week without batting an eye.

But it didn't, so they won't. They're in the business of making money, not supporting ideology. They do not care what you think so long as you're forking over cash. So stop playing the victim card.

That line about "hillbilly music" isn't really fair. Why, there's an awful lot of really good "hillbilly music" made by Democrats. One of my favorites, Ralph Stanley, a true classic by any standard, has recently started airing in commercials for Obama.

Dont ever expect it to get nominated for the OSCARS,GOLDEN GLOBE or PEOPLES CHOICE its too conservative and too proamerican

It is pretty sad that you guys think Hollywood executives care about anything but money.

Money isn't the only concern. They also care about looking hip and cool so the Hollywood glitterati won't look down on them.

If AN AMERICAN CAROL generated anything like real income, they'd make thirty more of them next week without batting an eye.

Not necessarily. Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ made an insane amount of money, yet you don't see the Hollywood nabobs falling all over themselves making religious movies, do you? No, you don't.

In short, your argument sucks. Better get another one.

Oh, come on. It's just a really shitty movie.

http://www.avclub.com/content/cinema/an_american_carol

They don't hand out a lot of 'F' grades. Even Bill Maher's stupid straw person attack on religion got a D+. Polemics generally don't do very well, critically speaking, but an F?

The Onion's AV Club are far from Hollywood insiders. When a film sucks, they say so; and when a film is great, they say so. Being the quintessential cerebral internet slackers that they are, their verdicts are as close to The Truth as one could ever hope to find. This movie is a joke, but not the funny kind that it fails to deliver.