First off, the obvious: This is a film about which you'll have to pretty much ignore votes, ratings and "helpful/unhelpful" tallies, because it's going to be alternately trashed and raved about almost entirely along party lines.
"American Carol" doesn't pretend to be anything but an in-your-face slam of Hollywood's and more broadly America's vestigial, recidivistic Left wing and pulls no punches in doing so, so the clash of vitriol vs. irrational exuberance has to be sifted through for more objective appraisals - which latter is my intent here.
I'm almost positive that this review is going to end up being exceedingly "un-useful," however. Oh darn.
By way of ideological identification I am mostly in tune with Zucker's attitude, though with a number of reservations. Which means I was predisposed to the film going in - which I suppose you could say makes me instantly biased. Nevertheless, I have a high standard for comedy regardless of external elements, and a harshly critical ear for humor. "American Carol" wasn't on the same par with Zucker's uproarious classics "Airplane" and, especially, "The Naked Gun"(#1 only,) but it kept me in laugh-out-loud stitches consistently. The man clearly has a good eye for comedic timing and the judicious placement of visual and verbal zingers.
Absent in "American Carol" were the nonstop background sight gags that made "Naked Gun" and "Airplane" so much fun. They were there, but most were front-and-center, and more sparse rather than constant - the political proselytizing would've been better served, and more effectively conveyed, by understating some of the politics in favor of more sight gags. It worked surprisingly well as comedy anyway, given that heavy political content. I would think that even an open-minded Democrat would enjoy this as a comedy, but he'd have to be fairly thick-skinned.
In terms of politics "American Carol" presents a long-overdue sendup of Michael Moore and that whole smug vestigial-Left clique who've had a hammerlock on Hollyweird since Reagan went on to bigger things after having cleaned out the grunge as head of SAG. More broadly it's a breath of fresh air just in its cracking through that stale, monolithic, Party-line goosestep that's tainted virtually every Hollywood release in recent years with its creepy, obligatory countercultural-Left subtext. Naturally, adherents to any monopoly will resist having that comfy monopoly disturbed, but in context of the commonly lip-serviced "marketplace of ideas," that particular monopoly had given a whole new meaning to the word "stale." Enough already. A little good old fashioned competition is the cure of course, and Zucker has done a great, courageous and undeniably funny job of providing it.
Advantage: Zucker. Bravo! More of this, please.
