Saving Christmas

Saving Christmas
Imagine The Room, but it was a Christmas movie. That's this movie in a nutshell.
Genre: Comedy Directed By: Darren Doane Produced By: Darren Doane Raphi Henly Amanda Rosser David Shannon Written By/Screenplay: Darren Doane Cheston Hervey Starring: Kirk Cameron Darren Doane Bridgette Ridenour David Shannon Raphi Henley Ben Kientz Cinematography: Andy Patch Distributed By: Samuel Goldwyn Films Release Date: November 14, 2014 Runtime: 79 minutes Country: United States Language: English Budget: $500,000 Box Office: $2.8 million

"Help me 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. 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!"

— Kirk Cameron's godawful response on Facebook

Saving Christmas (AKA: Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas) is a 2014 American faith-based comedy movie directed by Darren Doane, written by Doane with Cheston Hervey, and Starring Kirk Cameron, Doane, Bridgette Ridenour, David Shannon, Raphi Henly, and Ben Kientz. The movie was released on November 14, 2014, for a two-week limited engagement.

Plot

After explaining why he loves everything about Christmas, Kirk takes his brother-in-law, Christian, on a tour to convince him that various popular elements of Christmas are biblical. The film combines a comedic narrative with educational elements, to "put Christ back in Christmas." The two then return home for the remainder of the family Christmas party.

Why It Didn't Save Christmas

1. Horrible story with very bad writing, dialogue, and rather forced acting.
2. Lazy attempts at humor with awful jokes and call-outs at Christmas to be insulting for the sake of being insulting.
3. A poor script full of Christian right-wing propaganda, based on Kirk's evangelical denomination.
   • Especially the main plot is nothing but a promotion of the 'Prosperity Gospel' message that is advocated by a few Pentecostals and Evangelicals, along with almost all Televangelists within the latter, in which their physical and financial health is the will of God and a person's faith, preaching, and donations to the cause will reward that person with material wealth.
4. Poor opening credits with cheaply made textures and spar animations that depict Jesus's birth.
5. There are some characters with some recycled actors during a St. Nicolas sequence.
6. Kirk's so-called "brother-in-law's" name is Christian, aka the largest religion in the entire world, which is offensive to Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodoxians.
7. Downright bizarre arguments created by Kirk trying to connect certain aspects of modern-day Christmas to Jesus' time.
8. Says that the materialism of the Christmas season is okay as their "theological" reason said so as mentioned in WIDSC##3, even portraying Kirk's brother-in-law Christian (yeah, real subtle there...) being in the wrong somehow for refusing to accept the materialism of the holiday. Ironically, Greed is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
9. Poor production values.
10. Diondre, a minor character, is incredibly unlikeable and very cringeworthy, and never shuts up.
11. Very stupid moments such as Cameron saying the cross where Jesus was crucified is also a Christmas tree.
12. When Kirk Cameron is sipping his hot chocolate at the intro, there is actually not any hot chocolate in the mug. It seems that Kirk is pretending he is drinking hot chocolate.
13. Very inappropriate - most blatantly, it's supposedly a family picture but gives quite some attention to Herod's Massacre of the Innocents.
    • Continuing, there is a sequence where St. Nicolas beats an innocent person to death.
14. Most characters are shallow. The characters that do get developed are written horribly.
15. Very misleading poster makes itself out to look like an action comedy film, which it is not. The film is just Kirk and Christian sitting in a car for most of the film.
16. Terrible soundtrack. Also includes the ear-bleeding "Jingle Bells" theme of the film in the intro.
17. As said in the plot section, Kirk Cameron loves everything about the Christmas season and the idea of convincing someone of the "theological" reason to take them on a tour that is deeply flawed. First off, It is stupid that people aside from Cameron only care about pretty decorations and presents is a very laughable plot point. Kirk the other hand believes in the "theology" message as said in WIS#3.
18. Christian's spiritual crisis is resolved with nearly a third of the movie still left to go, and everything else at this point is just padding.
19. Historical/Biblical inaccuracies, mostly with a scene portraying Santa (St. Nicolas) as either a Northern European tribesman or a caveman instead of a Greco-Byzantine bishop as both mythical and real-life faithfully (no pun intended) and realistically portrayed him, along with "reacting" an even more distorted version of a legend of him "attacking" the heretic Arius at the First Council of Nicaea ecumenical council meeting.
    • Which is itself odd, as Kirk in real life is a devoted Evangelical Protestant Christian, whose denominations have treated these Ecumenical council meetings as very less seriously... so yeah, he is creating an unintentional out-of-character moment to his fictional self in the process, as a means to push a badly thought out propaganda message.
    • Kirk also got wrong in saying that Jesus was born in a cave. The New Testament makes it pretty clear that he was born in a stable.
20. Crappy intro sequence of the movie with Kirk acting cringy as hell with him saying everything about Christmas and loving every single aspect of it.
21. The dance sequence at the ending. Enough said.
22. In speaking of the ending, Cameron says to imagine having the "best dishes, the richest butter" is downright cringeworthy, from there, the last 10 minutes of the movie is abysmal.
23. Misleading title: Cameron does not save Christmas at all, but rather just tells the "theology" message to as again said in the #3 pointer.

Redeeming Qualities That Save Christmas And Got Put On Santa's Nice List

1. Saving Christmas does have a "so bad, it's good" vibe, and can have its hilarious moments here and there.
2. The movie's poster, while misleading, is a total badass, trying too good to be awesome. The concept of a Christmas action movie is quite interesting and would have been a better idea for this Christmas nonsense.

Reception

Saving Christmas was heavily lambasted by critics and moviegoers upon release. Nowadays, it is considered to be one of the worst movies of 2014 and also one of the worst movies ever made. The film received a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It was nominated in 6 categories for the 35th Golden Raspberry Awards and won 4, including Worst Picture, Worst Director, and Worst Actor. Three weeks after its release, the film holds a 1.4/10 on IMDB, due to this the movie gained additional notoriety when it became the lowest-rated film on IMDb's Bottom 100 list. The film is so far the only Christmas film to win the Golden Raspberry Award. The upload of the movie's trailer was disliked and bombed on YouTube. However, despite the tremendously negative reception, Kirk Cameron was deeply shaken by the reception of the film and reacted highly negatively to the reception of the movie, and heavily argued that the only reason his film was disliked was that it was reviewed by "haters", "trolls" and "atheists", which is a clear proof that he cannot even handle the slightest amount of criticism.

Box Office

Saving Christmas opened up at #15 on its opening weekend grossing $992,087. It later made a total domestic gross of $2,783,970. Overall, the film made a worldwide gross of $2,778,297 against its $500,000 budget. It was never released anywhere outside the United States.

Kirk Cameron's Reaction

Kirk Cameron was deeply shaken by the negative reviews and reacted very negatively to the reception of the movie. He pleaded with his fans on his Facebook page with the said message. (read the top of the page) This resulted in a massive backlash at the film, and on IMDB people rated this film so low that in just 3 weeks, it beat Disaster Movie for the top spot on the Bottom 100 list and stayed there until it was beaten in 2015 by Code Name K.O.Z. Cameron later blamed this action and response on "haters and atheists", this proves that Kirk can't handle criticism. Soon, his plea only devastated his reputation as an actor and made his film notorious for being the lowest-rated on IMDb's Bottom 100 list. Soon, it also became featured on Wikipedia's "List of films considered the worst" page. Despite the tremendously negative reception, he still thinks that it was because of "haters" and "atheists".

Trivia

• This was the first Christmas movie to win a Razzie Award, though it wasn't the first holiday film to be nominated.
• Even though the film had a limited theatrical release in the United States, it was never released anywhere outside the United States.

External links

• Saving Christmas at the Internet Movie Database
• Saving Christmas on Rotten Tomatoes
• Saving Christmas on Metacritic
• Saving Christmas on Letterboxd

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