(Kirk Cameron’s) Saving Christmas is possibly the weirdest movie I’ve seen in a very long time. The trailer suggests its a defense of Christmas from those horrible people who want to take the Christ out of Christmas (the old ‘War on Christmas’ thing). In reality, it’s Kirk Cameron’s defense of Christmas from other Christians who think all the trapping of the holiday are missing the point. It’s a largely a one-sided dialog between Cameron and his brother-in-law who hates all this Christmas stuff because none of it it has anything to do with worshiping Christ and all that money could be used to dig wells and feed the homeless. Cameron then spends the entire movie assuring us that all of our materialism, our “worship” of Santa, the tree, the requisite but ignored manger scene, and all that are deeply rooted in the bible and/or religious traditions.

It makes these arguments in some deeply unconvincing and tortured ways. But that’s what the movie is – two guys sitting in a car. The brother-in-law (whose name is Christian because this movie is subtle) will say, for example that the Christmas Tree is a pagan symbol and can’t be found in the bible and then Kirk Cameron puts A and B and C together in a very tenuous way and proves it’s completely biblical. But the way he does it creates logic holes you could drive a sleigh and 8 tiny reindeer through.

The movie then ends with a 5 minute (no kidding) hip hop dance number because why wouldn’t it?

So the full movie is full of weird rationalizations for all the trapping of Christmas but it also is earnest and means well. It’s not mean spirited and doesn’t attack anyone… it genuinely wants people to enjoy the Christmas season without guilt – to eat, give presents, help others, and all the stuff we usually conflate with Christmas. Kirk Cameron’s brand of Christianity in the real world is pretty close-minded but he leaves all that aside to make an earnest, charming, but exceedingly weird and kinda unintentionally funny film.

I’ll be completely honest… I went into this movie expecting it to be one of the worst movies of the year. That was my mindset based on reviews I’d read in advance and from my very negative response to the trailer which positioned the movie as an “us against them” culture war polemic. The movie has deeply terrible critical reviews and I think they are being a little unfair (which is an all-too-typical response to these devout Christian-theme movies of late). I think the movie is pretty wrong about some stuff and kind of broken in terms of any kind of traditional concept of how a movie is “supposed” to be presented… but I was not bored and I was reasonably entertained (possibly for the wrong reasons). It’s a fascinatingly weird movie.

p.s. My original write-up gave a bunch of examples of the arguments and rationalizations which I decided to cut out for brevity (on an already long review). I could go on and on about some of those arguments and some possibly racist depictions of jive-talkin’ black men, and how the movie suggests only men can be curmudgeons around Christmas but those are all details. Moving on.

Score: 76