Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas!

Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas (2014)

Runtime: 79 agonizing minutes

"Directed" by: Darren Doane

"Starring": Cameron, Doane, and people best not to mention here to save their reputation

From: Samuel Goldwyn Films, who should have known better

I never thought I’d see myself in this position, but here we go… as typical, discussion on a messageboard gave me the idea to finally see this infamous motion picture. It has to be clarified right away that for those reading this of who are of faith and are proud to call themselves Christians, please not that my review will NOT be an attack on anyone who thinks that “they should put Christ back into Christmas” or should be insulting to those devoted people. Rather, I will discuss why a guy who comes off as a weirdo w/ a lack of self-awareness failed spectacularly in his justification to love the commercialized aspects of the holiday while being a Christian at the same time in a poorly made, totally amateur motion picture.

Cameron manages to bash both atheists who have “taken over” Christmas and the fundamentalist Christians who think that the holiday is too materialized; what is the saying about having your cake and eating it too? Much of the movie is Cameron’s character trying to convince his brother-in-law (Christian; yes, his name was Christian) that the commercial aspects of Christmas aren’t “pagan” in nature and thus he should enjoy Christmas trees, nutcrackers, and the other items that have become iconography for the holiday. The brother-in-law Christian is portrayed as a sanctimonious buffoon & presents flimsy strawman arguments which Cameron tries to refute—“tries” the key word here. His validation is just weak and flimsy for each talking point; some were obviously bunk those that know more than me say the other validations were at best misleading and at worst, total poppycock.

That’s not even taking into account the generally poor filmmaking craft that’s constantly on display, how cheap the movie appears, the off-putting attempts at “humor”, the generally weird points that Cameron sometimes attempts to make (I don’t even know what his stance was on conspiracy theorists; yes, there was a scene devoted to that); even if you aren’t put off by Kirk & his over-inflated ego smugly preaching to the audience, the “acting” and the “storytelling” alone is off-putting to the extreme. Darren Doane deserves plenty of condemnation also—he not only directed, produced, and wrote the movie, he portrayed Christian… rather poorly, to be frank. Heck, the film effectively ends at around the 55 minute mark and the credits roll 70 minutes in; there is plenty of padding, which I’ll explain in a moment.

This at times made me wonder if Cameron had all his marbles. The movie made me cringe often at how pathetic it was; the nadir was an extended dance sequence; yes, Kirk, Doane and other weird dorky white people do their vanilla version of “busting a move” to a terrible “electronic” version of Angels We Have Heard on High! That sequence is never-ending, to boot; you’ll never cringe harder at lame middle-aged Doane “breakdancing” or lame middle-aged Cameron doing the worm! By comparison, the “outtakes” that pad the ending credits are great.

As I’ve seen Christians on Letterboxd note that they hated the movie, that’s why I feel more free to note that this seemed like a shallow justification for Kirk Cameron to justify his wealth. Please don’t ever watch Saving Christmas during the holidays… or at any time.