Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas – A Defense (Sort of)

This is a piece I never imagined I'd write. At least, not this way. I've had a desire to write something for this movie since it first came out, but never really got to it. I had held back, reluctant to just bag on this movie for the sake of bagging on it – fun as that may be.

Then this holiday season rolled around and I started compiling a list of seasonal movies leading this to creep back into my brain, and I found myself looking at it from a different direction that hadn’t occurred to me before.

So...here we go.

At the risk of starting in a roundabout way, I don't think I've ever said this before here, but I could never really get into the Sharknado films. I bring this up for one reason, and I swear I’m going somewhere with this – sincerity.

The thing that genuinely takes a bad film and makes it entertaining for me is when it is so genuinely unaware of how bad it is, and is therefore free to just completely go wild.

It's with this in mind that I say – I come not to bury Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas, but to praise it. Perhaps not the praise he would desire, but certainly the praise it has earned.

Buckle up, kids. We're goin' for a ride!

Because let me be clear – Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas isn't a good movie by any reasonable or sane film making criteria – but damned if it isn't a surprisingly brisk, enjoyably batshit mess to want to share for the holidays. The fact this didn't take off as more of a 'so bad it's good' gem in the vein of The Room or the works of Neil Breen genuinely disappoints me, because this is movie is a perfect example of what I mean about the value of sincerity in the camp of enjoyably bad cinema.

For those who aren't familiar with this film, the title is as good a place as any to start in explaining – this movie is one of the brain children of Kirk 'the platypus is proof of intelligent design' Cameron, the former child star turned devout fundamentalist. He's lent his name and role to several faith-based movies over the years, from the well-intended if misguided Fireproof, to his earlier (and more relatively overt) documentaries Unstoppable and Monumental.

In 2014, he announced his next movie would be entitled Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas. Given the flavor of seasonal discourse at the time, everyone saw this and thought ‘Oh God, Kirk Cameron’s going to do a War on Christmas’ movie. I was among those people. A bad movie group I take part in was eagerly awaiting the release of this one for a proper group watch.

When it came out, we were all set to take part in what we thought was going to be the season version of God’s Not Dead. What we got instead was so much better. What Kirk Cameron gave the world was one deeply religious man’s attempt to spiritually reclaim yuletide commercialism and secularism as having been entirely Christian elements all along.

"The store had a fake fire going in this place. Me, I prefer a little verisimilitude. I guess what I'm saying is, we have one take to get this right before the store's smoke alarms go off."

No. Really. The whole argument of this movie is that everything about Christmas is, somehow or other, Christian in origin. Yes, even the things that predate the holiday.

Like I said, there’s value in sincere batshit.

It's tough to say where this would be classified as a movie. While it's trying to make itself a message movie. complete with an opening thesis you'd expect from a documentary (...of sorts), the entire thing is framed in a sort of alternate fantasy world right out of the gate with a scene where Kirk greets us in a living room so pristine and perfectly decorated, you half expect a furniture store employee to come in and ask who gave him and his crew permission to film there.

In this intro, Kirk espouses on his love of all things Christmas and how some groups – to his credit he doesn’t name names quite as overtly as the God’s Not Dead crowd would – wish to take all that away, and it is with that debate in mind that he has made this movie to try and show them. How does that work? Watch and see!

The bulk of the movie then takes us a level deeper into the world of fantasy Kirk and his fictional family’s Christmas party, where Kirk is a wide-eyed, slightly insane guardian angel to his brother-in-law Christian (I'd ding this for its lack of subtlety, but really, that's a point in favor for this argument.) Christian hasn’t been feeling the holiday spirit because he sees all the commercialism and crass marketing of the holiday and feels like it all misses the point.

*crackle* He...sees you...
When you're *crackle*--ping...
He knows *crackle*-en you're a-*hiss*
He...knows...if..you've been *sharp squeal of static
and what could almost pass for a human scream*
*loud click as signal goes dead*

Christian, Kirk argues, is the one who’s missed the point, and the things he assumes to be secular and non-Christian are in fact VERY Christian. We then spend most of the movie with these two out in the garage - with cutaways, naturally - say what you will for Kirk's ideology, he's not gonna pull a grift like that - wherein Christian vents his points, and Kirk argues them with a logic that is at the best moments, stretching itself, at worst, of questionable sanity. This framing has led many to an alternate reading of the film where whenever the camera isn’t on the two men, they’re passing the bong back and forth, and Kirk’s meticulous arguments about the true Christian nature of the holiday are simply the yuletide ramblings of an incredibly stoned man.

Of course, the movie DOES take a moment to actually touch on the conceptual War on Christmas – albeit in a side segment that qualifies more as a sketch involving two black party guests that ramble through obvious ADR about odd conspiracy theories. I stress obvious - they spend the bulk of the scene with their mouths concealed behind glasses in a way that evokes the old Simpsons Superbowl joke involving the ATLANTA FALCONS and the DENVER BRONCOS. The scene ultimately adds nothing to the movie either. They appear at the beginning of the film and return later during the end of the movie padding reel, but ultimately they're just two guests that exist to give us a short break from Kirk and Christian's Christmas bake-off (I know, that's not what's really happening, but it DOES make the movie make more sense.)

Given how long this scene plays for, I kind of feel bad for these two - they had to stay like this for several minutes, just holding those mugs over their mouths with the knowledge the actual conversation would just get dubbed over later.

This before returning to Uncle Kirk’s magical mystery tour, wherein we’re treated to arguments about how deeply Christian things like Christmas trees and the full mythology behind Santa Claus is. Framed against Christian’s own issues, Kirk’s logic plays as a weird apologia for yuletide commercialism – it ain’t pointless or crass if you can tie the Lord into it!

Just...you know, maybe keep that logic away from history books or this movie is gonna start turning some corners.

From an execution standpoint, this isn’t especially bad, admittedly – it’s certainly low-budget enough, but that only really creaks when it comes to the few uses of FX the movie calls for. It’s in the movie’s mission statement and spirit that its schlock credentials truly shine. Right down to the movie’s ideological finale – which comes at roughly about an hour in – where a newly invigorated Christian embraces the holiday spirit in a vein that’s less Ebenezer Scrooge reborn and more a raging derelict on their third hit of PCP, the movie trucks in a weird vein of being unapologetic in its festivity to the point that logic jumps out the window screaming and on fire. There's a small, perhaps too short burst of genuine emotion in reconciliation tucked in there, but that's before it breaks down into a full blown, run-time padding holiday dance party that, despite being one of the cleanest, whitest things you'll ever see, feels like watching a fever dream celebration on the level of the finale to Brian Yuzna's Society.

"MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL,
AND LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH!"

If I had to give this film one other piece of partial credit, it’s that the logic pretzels it twists in order to try and legitimize the Christianity of all things Christmas is surprisingly neutral. Even the War on Christmas riff mentioned above, bizarre as it is, reads more like a weird checklist of conspiracy theories than an attempt by this movie to condemn any one party or ideology. In a film coming out in the midst of the success of the God’s Not Dead series, there’s something honestly a touch refreshing about the fact that, as batshit as this movie is, it’s not hateful batshit - Kirk's later statements about the film's poor performance notwithstanding.

There you have it: the case made for Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas as a relatively short, sweet, completely unhinged attempt to rationalize the divide between secularism and spirituality that ultimately accomplishes nothing, but whose biggest strength lies in how sincerely it sticks to its downright ludicrous premise.

So over the next few days, if you’re feeling like you need some new blood in your holiday viewing lineup, or you find yourself in a bind because your copy of The Star Wars Holiday Special or Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 is on the blink, consider gathering some friends and family around this one, pull up a stiff drink, and enjoy watching Kirk Cameron’s festive side do its best impression of the red yarn side of YouTube minus all the creepy bigotry.

Also this. I take no responsibility for if this appears in your nightmares any time between now and New Years.

And until next time, a Happy Insert Your Festivity of Choice, and will see you all again in the new year.

Till then.