Christmas film sparks Internet battle
For weeks now, a battle of biblical proportions has raged between believers and non-believers, Christians and atheists, and, yes, even good and evil, according to former child actor and current Christian evangelist Kirk Cameron.
The battleground for this epic struggle: the Internet, where Cameron’s recently released movie, Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas, has received some rough audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and, worse, garnered the ignominious distinction of being ranked No. 1 on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) Bottom 100 ... meaning, it’s the worst movie of all time.
Despite being panned by professional critics, Cameron, who played Mike Seaver on Growing Pains, is convinced his film’s painfully low rating from IMDb users is the result of “haters,” “pagans” and an atheist conspiracy allegedly hatched on Reddit.
Fighting the good fight last month, Cameron pleaded with his fans on Facebook to give his movie a boost by helping him “storm the gates of Rotten Tomatoes.”
“All of you who love Saving Christmas — go rate it at Rotten Tomatoes right now and send the message to all the critics that WE decide what movies we want our families to see!” Cameron wrote. “If 2,000 of you (out of almost 2 million on this page) take a minute to rate Saving Christmas, it will give the film a huge boost and more will see it as a result! Thank you for all your help and support in putting the joy of Christ back in Christmas!”
It didn’t work. After a wave of support briefly shot the rating past 90 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, prompting a congratulatory Facebook post from Cameron, the rating plummeted. Like really, really plummeted.
To date, Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas has generated 175 pages of impassioned comments — and a zero per cent rating on the Tomatometer.
By comparison, The Room, which for years some critics have considered to be the worst movie of all time, has a 33 per cent rating.
The Duck Dynasty gang endorsed Saving Christmas, as did the Dove Foundation, Christian author and speaker Jay Younts and Ben Carson, among others.
But there seems to be little doubt Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas is a historically awful film, as mainstream movie critics whose reviews have been collected by Metacritic seem to agree.
“This may be one of the least artful holiday films ever made,” wrote Bill Zwecker of the Chicago SunTimes. “Even devout born-again Christians will find this hard to stomach.”
“An unholy mess,” Michael Rechtshaffen of the Los Angeles Times said, adding: “Virtually everything about this production feels thrown together.”
“It’s not a movie so much as it’s an extended Sunday school sermonette, with Cameron teaching his born-again brother-in-law not to dislike Christmas trees, Santa Claus and gifts, because — as Saving Christmas is about to expend a great deal of effort to prove — all of those things celebrate the birth and life of Jesus,” wrote The Wrap’s Alonzo Duralde. “(Did I mention that this straw man, who can’t win an argument to save his life, is named Christian?)”
And yet Box Office Mojo reports the film has generated more than $2.5 million since it opened last month. And Cameron says it’s expanding its theatrical release into more cities.