For as long as there have been movies there has been the desire to tell stories that depart from the norm and venture into sometimes dangerous new territory.  And whenever we see a movie that intentionally means to provoke a response, that response will usually manifest itself as a backlash from those who don’t like it’s message or content.  But whether or not the response the movie gets is positive or negative, the one thing that ‘s for sure when a film courts controversy is that it gets everyone talking about it.  What is amazing today, in our social media driven culture is that controversy can now become a viable marketing tool for a movie to run on.  Even if you have a movie that is drawing scorn from a large amount of people, it still boosts the exposure of the product, especially if it becomes controversial to the point of being headline worthy.  But the question remains whether or not a movie demands to be seen once it becomes a hot button issue.  Are we compelled to see what all the fuss is about or should we ignore the hype and stop feeding the beast?  Like most things, it really comes down to the product itself, and whether or not it can stand on it’s own amid all the noise.  But the fact that not only does controversy help put the spotlight on the film but actually helps it to gain much more success than it would have normally is really something interesting in the industry.  One other interesting outcome of this is finding out whether the controversy is warranted in the first place.  Sometimes a movie is just ahead of its time and looking back on past controversies can sometimes make them look ridiculous in hindsight.  It’s a cycle played out all the time in Hollywood, and even though it happens often, we can still be surprised by the extent of a movie’s impact on our larger culture, or at least the established order it can shake up.

This is something that we are currently seeing played out in our cinemas now with Clint Eastwood’s new film American Sniper.  In my review of this movie a couple weeks ago, I highlighted the fact that the film took a rather polarizing figure in our recent history of war and used him as a focal point for a larger examination of the life of a modern American soldier.  Understandably, basing a movie on the life of a controversial figure like Chris Kyle was going to ruffle a few feathers in both our pop cultural and political world, and sure enough, the last month has been a firestorm of everyone putting in their own two cents about the movie.  Interestingly enough, the critiques of the movie have run pretty much down party lines, albeit with a couple open-minded voices actually breaking from the predictable opinion.  Since the movie’s release, we’ve seen critics attack this movie as being right-wing propaganda and racists to Muslims, while others on the opposite side view it as a strong endorsement of American military might.  My own opinion is that neither extreme is true, and that the movie is an intriguing character study of a flawed but talented soldier in combat, and how that experience is indicative of many more like him trying to come back to a normal life at home.  But, what I find the most interesting about the movie is how much the controversy has fueled it’s box office numbers.  It broke all sorts of box office records for the month of January and is continuing to dominate headlines in both the entertainment and political world.  In this case, I think that the movie accomplished something good by being controversial, because it’s gotten everyone talking about important issues like the responsibilities of war and how we treat our wounded soldiers.  And it also offers up a picture of war that can’t be so easily defined by conservative or liberal talking points.

But, while American Sniper is the hot button issue of now, it’s not the first movie to stir up controversy, nor the first to have been the beneficiary of added exposure.  Cinematic history is full of movies that pushed the boundaries of taste and socially acceptable behavior.  In the early days of Hollywood, the standards of violence and sex had yet to be established, so for many years filmmakers were free to push boundaries all the time.  Even studio made movies had openly frank movies about violence (1931’s Scarface) and sex (1933’s Baby Face), but that all came to an end with the establishment of the Hays Code, a restrictive set of guidelines set up by religious figures in conjunction with studio heads in order to “clean up” the loose morals of the movies.  For the decades that followed, Hollywood would play it safe and movies became a lot more sanitized and morally righteous in the years after.  Restrictions on depicting violence loosened during the war years, but even still, approval by committee had to be given.  In the 50’s, the McCarthy trials also made the studio system weary of political messages in the films as well, which led to an unprecedented era of censorship in the realm of film-making.  And naturally, when restrictions become too much of a burden, it inevitably leads to a backlash, and for many years Hollywood started to fall behind as necessary controversy existed outside of the industry, rather than being guided within.  It wasn’t until the late 60’s, after the Hays Code and the Blacklist were abolished did we see an era where free expression and new ideas become a big part of the cinematic experience again, at least for a time.

During the tumultuous 60’s and 70’s, when Vietnam and Watergate dominated the headlines, Hollywood was finally embracing filmmakers who had ideas and stories that could shake up the world and even change it for the better.  One thing that came about in this time was the creation of the Ratings system, conducted by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), a corporation set up for the specific purpose of determining the appropriate audience for any select film based on it’s content.  Sort of a self governing body, the MPAA took the power out of the government and studios hands to determine if a movie should be seen or not based on it’s content and instead left that determination up to the customers, giving them the information based on the rating upon it’s release.  In the beginning of this new system, Hollywood didn’t prejudge movies by their ratings, and instead celebrated the changing attitudes that were starting to become popular at this time.  Even movies slapped with the highly restrictive X-rating (which banned any audience members under the age of 17 from seeing it) were celebrated; director John Schlesinger’s X-Rated Midnight Cowboy (1969) even won the Oscar for Best Picture that year.  But, even though hot button movies were embraced in this time period, there was also an inevitable backlash as well.  Religious groups organized to the point where they could put pressure on the studios once again, and the MPAA’s ratings system became less of a suggestion for audiences, and more of a standardized label that segregated movies away from each other.  In the 80’s and 90’s, it began to matter a lot more whether you were saddled with a PG or R rating.  And in this time, controversial movies began to stand out that much more.

But do filmmakers set out to make their movies controversial and do they really use that as a way to boost their production’s exposure?  For many, I don’t think that filmmakers really want their movie to be seen as controversial.  Provocative, yes; but I don’t think they have the intention to draw criticism onto themselves.  For a lot of filmmakers, their choice of project is more about the story they want to tell and their belief that people will indeed want to hear it.  Controversy will sometimes arise when the filmmaker runs into a wall of rejection when their tastes run contrary to a whole select of people, usually those who share different worldviews than the filmmaker.  What may seem rational to one will seem radical to another, and the storm raised between one and another is what fuels the controversy around any given movie.  This usually comes down to three certain areas of contention, which are politics, religion, and standards of violence.  Probably the most effective way to really push a few buttons in Hollywood would be through tackling religious doctrine.  The film industry is primarily secular, with a few religious camps present as sort of a niche market, but if a major filmmaker chooses to take on a religious subject head-on, it usually ends up drawing the ire of some.  I’m of the belief that religious themed movies can be worthwhile if they have something interesting to say; which unfortunately very few of them do.  But, when experimental filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Darren Aronofsky tackle biblical tales in unconventional ways, it suddenly makes their projects much more explosive, because of how their breaking from an established order of things in Hollywood, both spiritual and secular.  Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) stands as one of the most controversial movies of all time, but that’s less because of it’s religious stance and more of because of how it affected different groups politically.  Even still, controversy got it exposure it definitely wasn’t expecting.

Whether expected or not, once a movie becomes a topic of discussion, it drives more people to want to see it.  Sometimes  it happens because of the movie’s content, and sometimes it just happens out of nowhere.  I’m sure that Seth Rogen and James Franco never thought that their silly buddy comedy The Interview would become so controversial that it would get pulled from the cinemas before release, but once you draw the ire of an international body intent on publicly shaming you just because you used them as your point of ridicule, you suddenly become on of the most controversial movies of all times.  And usually it’s just the timing of the controversy that matters the most.  Your movie may intend to push a few buttons, but unless it’s relevant to the times we live in, no one will really care.  Some controversial movies of the past now feel tame, and that’s usually because of the loosening of social standards on violence and sex in the years since.  Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece A Clockwork Orange (1971) was so controversial in it’s time, that it was banned in the United Kingdom for decades for having inspired rising gang violence in that country.  Seen today, after all the violent movies that Hollywood puts out today, Clockwork Orange doesn’t have the same kind of shock factor, unless you count the unsettling eye torture that Malcolm McDowell’s Alex goes through later in the film.  But it’s notoriety was definitely fueled by it’s early explosive reputation.  And it’s button-pushing movies like this that have indeed moved society in a different direction that helps to make it’s content more acceptable.

With the market changing rapidly and Video on Demand becoming a new, profitable venue for film distribution, many have to wonder if there is any reason to go to the movie theater anymore.  The way that Hollywood answers that question is to make movies that are more than just an afternoon diversion and instead turn them into all out events.  It’s the reason why we still see movie productions with massive budgets nowadays, because the studios need their tent-poles in order to draw in the big crowds.  While there are many standout epic productions made every year, very few of them live up to their potential, and in turn that has led to a lot of concerns about whether the studio system can sustain the rising costs of making “big” movies year after year.  For most films, a substantial budget can certainly help, especially if there is a visionary director keeping things under control on the set, but sometimes it doesn’t matter how much the movie costs.  Sometimes its the presentation that matters the most.  The one thing that makes or breaks an epic film is how well it is paced and structured in the end.  All the visual pastiche put on the screen won’t matter if there is no momentum to the story, or even if there’s too much.  Epic scale is only effective if it is given the right amount of purpose behind it.  Sometimes, if the story is able to support it, an epic movie can hold our attention for a very extended period of time, but if the foundation is flimsy, epic length can end up working against the film too.  And in order to be profitable, movies of epic size have to be available for multiple screenings as well, so time restrictions can put pressure on a film’s production, and that may also end up compromising the movie’s overall effectiveness.  There are many factors that may influence a film’s run-time, but in the end, you either end up with a small story that can feel enormous or a big story that can feel small, and how well that works in the movies favor is based solely on how well the filmmakers have used the time given to them.

When film-making first started to become a popular art-form, it was usually limited to simple productions that would run for a single reel at most (which is roughly 20 minutes of run-time).  No one in the turn-of-the-20th Century thought to take cinematic storytelling into a longer format, because in that time, cinema was just seen as a sideshow act meant to entertain passers-bys with short, amusing vignettes of life.  It wasn’t until the emergence of D.W. Griffith that we began to see the beginnings of feature length story-telling.  And not only would Griffith show the world that you could tell a screen story in a lengthier format, but he would do so with what is widely considered the first Hollywood blockbuster; the epic scaled and controversial The Birth of a Nation (1915).  Nation dwarfed every film that came before it, running at a staggering 3 hours in length.  And yet, by pioneering the use of inter-cutting between multiple stories and defining the look of epic scale staging (particularly in the battle scenes), Griffith’s picture was able to sustain audience interest over that incredible length of time, and it’s influence is still felt today.  Unfortunately, the film’s racist message mars it’s reception today, and it should be rightfully condemned, despite it’s importance.  Griffith’s even more ambitious follow-up Intolerance (1916) continued to redefine the rules of cinema, cross-cutting between four different time periods connected by a common theme, and it still captivated audiences for over 3 hours of run-time.  But, as Hollywood would define itself in the years after, film-making became more standardized, and studios imposed more restrictions on the length of their movies, choosing nice compact 90 minute crowd-pleasers, over the grandness of a Griffith epic.

In the peak years during the studio system, epic length became more specialized to certain productions.  In those years, a big movie had to be an event, so as to stand out from the regular matinee fare.  Producer David O. Selznick accomplished what he believed to be the epic to end all epics with his grand scale production of Margaret Mitchell’s epic novel, Gone With the Wind, making a movie that defined the genre as a whole.  At nearly four hours in length, it is remarkable to see how well Gone With the Wind is able to sustain it’s size and scale.  It never once looses audience interest, and that’s largely due to assured film-making that never wastes a single moment.  For years afterwards, Wind would be the gold standard for all Hollywood epics, and it wasn’t until the mid 50’s that we would see another film that came close to it’s epic length.  With the advent of television, Hollywood began to relax it’s tight restrictions on film length.  A new practice began to emerge in these years, taking a cue from Selznick’s presentation of Gone With the Wind, which was called the Roadshow feature.  This was a special kind of theater engagement where a film was presented much like a stage production would be; with specially written programs given out to audience members, and the movie would begin with an orchestrated Overture, as well as having an Intermission halfway through.  The inclusion of an intermission was especially helpful for movies at this time, because it helped to justify the longer run-times of epic length movies, making the 50’s and 60’s a Golden Era for the 3 hour epic.  In this period, we saw many of the best examples of epic length productions, like Ben-Hur (1959, 211 minutes), Spartacus (1960, 195 minutes), and Lawrence of Arabia (1962, 217 minutes); all unbound by time constraints and were all considered more than just a movie.

But, once the era of the Hollywood epic came to a close, mainly due to a rise in more intimate and smaller scale films from the New Hollywood of the 70’s, epic length became more about what was called for in the story.  Epics still existed, but they were more exclusive and dictated more by what kind of story the filmmaker wanted to tell.  Sometimes this would lead to some of the most unexpected of epics, including ones that took up a very short amount of screen-time.  Robert Altman, for example, managed to redefine the meaning of epic by creating movies both large and small, but still always grand in ambition.  Sometimes he could accomplish this with a modest sized film like M.A.S.H. (1970, 116 minutes) or a epic scale one like Nashville (1975, 160 minutes), both of which feel both big and intimate, largely due to out-sized performances by his large cast of actors.  Francis Ford Coppola on the other hand, made some the eras grandest cinematic achievements, each with epic lengths to match that ambition like The Godfather (1972, 177 minutes) and Apocalypse Now (1979, 153 minutes), and yet he still managed to do so with the more intimate film techniques of that era.  New Hollywood epics would largely come to define the rules of epic film-making that we still see in practice today, especially with the rise of the blockbuster film in this period.  This included the end of the Roadshow presentation and the beginning of epic scale action flicks that could give the audiences the size and scope they wanted in only a fraction of the time.  And in this blockbuster era, we see more and more examples of how a movies length can impact the effectiveness of it’s story.

The odd byproduct of the blockbuster era is that now we are seeing movies that never would have been given a large amount of screen-time in the past, but are now bloated up to epic size and length, mainly so that they can fulfill the expectations of a tent-pole release. Sometimes this can be a blessing for a film, but that’s only if the filmmakers use their time well.  Other times, we end up with movies that run about 2 1/2 hours, but only feature about 90 minutes worth of story.  Excess is a big problem with epic movies today, which comes from the mistaken belief that bigger always means better.  Sometimes it ends up making what could have been a good film into an underwhelming one, because if the story doesn’t engage the audience all the way through, all the unnecessary action is just going to feel tedious.  That’s often a case of adapting something from one medium to another.  If you have a lot of story to tell, like with Gone With the Wind, than you’ll find it easier to fill every moment of your movie with interesting material.  But, if you’re expanding beyond what’s already there, then you run the risk of wasting people’s time with things and ideas that don’t matter in the long run.  There’s a reason why How the Grinch Stole Christmas works so much better at 30 minutes than at 2 hours in length.  A movie’s length must consider what works best for the momentum of the story.  Sometimes just using the essentials is the best method.  But, if the director has enough good ideas and can execute them well enough over a lengthier period of time, then the opposite can also be true.  This is primarily what separates the Christopher Nolans from the Michael Bays.

There are rare exceptions for movies that actually fall victim to the opposite idea, however.  Sometimes we see too much story told in too short of a film.  This is usually a problem found in most animated movies, which is a genre that strangely still is restricted by studio imposed time constraints.  Now, there are many animated movies over the years that have managed to tell grand scale stories in a remarkably short amount of time and succeeded; 1959’s Sleeping Beauty for example tells a very epic scale story, but manages to pack it all into a very tightly paced 75 minutes.  1942’s Bambi even managed to tell a multi-generational story in just little over an hour.  But, given the more sophisticated tools we have nowadays in animation, there should be fewer limits to the run-times of an animated movie.  Sadly most studios like Disney and Dreamworks are still insistent on staying at or under the 90 minute mark.  Now, if you’re movie is something modest like Lilo and Stitch (2002), than 90 minutes is plenty of time to tell a story.  But when you try to make a movie that introduces a complex world with a cast of a dozen or so characters, like 1985’s The Black Cauldron or 2001’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire, than 90 minutes is nowhere near enough time to build momentum for your story.  Atlantis in particular is probably one of the most clear examples of a movie stifled by an unforgiving time limit.  It never gives us enough time to absorb the world that it’s trying to create nor does it give enough time for us to gain sympathy for the characters.  The argument can be made here that if you’re going to make an epic than you should make an epic.  Going halfway only makes the end product feel hollow and uninteresting.  Pixar Animation thankfully bucked the trend by making animated movies that didn’t restrict themselves with time limits.  The Incredibles (2004) ran at a solid 115 minutes, and never once lagged, showing that animation can indeed work in a longer format.  It all shows that too little time can also work against a story’s pace, and that a film’s length must again factor in what’s best for the overall picture.

Hollywood, not one to miss opportunities, has found a way to please all sides whenever a film’s length comes into question.  When a movie makes it to home video, we will oftentimes see multiple cuts made available for purchase, enabling the consumer to decide how much they want to see of a particular film.  Sometimes it’s a decision made in collaboration with the director; Peter Jackson, in particular, has made longer cuts of his already lengthy Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies available on DVD and Blu-ray, some of which audiences prefer to the original theatrical cuts.  And then there are extended cuts of the movies that are made available after the original versions left their creators unsatisfied with the results.  These are usually called the Director’s Cut, which sometimes is a lengthier version of the film that includes scenes that the director wanted but had to cut due to time restrictions by the studio.  Sometimes a director’s cut can drastically alter the experience, like with Ridley Scott’s 2005 epic, Kingdom of Heaven, which is vastly improved in it’s longer 3 hour version.  Other times, a director’s cut changes nothing, like Oliver Stone’s multiple attempts to fix his 2004 epic Alexander, or Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now Redux, which showed that a shorter version left a better impact.  Ridley Scott in particular has often had the most interesting experience with Director’s Cuts, since both Kingdom of Heaven and his beloved 1982 classic Blade Runner are so drastically altered in their extended cuts.  Whether it adds a little, or a lot, or even subtracts from the original theatrical release, Director’s Cuts are an interesting example of how the usage of time can change the perception of a movie.  It all depends on how strong the vision is behind the story, and whether or not time restrictions benefits the overall product or detracts from it.

Overall, we’ve seen many movies over the years that either felt too long or too short for their own good.  Some audiences out there prefer movies that are quick and easy to watch, not wanting to have their whole day taken up watching just one movie.  I personally don’t mind a film’s length if it runs over three hours or more.  It all just depends on how well those three hours are used.  My two favorite movies in fact are both over three hours long, in fact; David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (217 minutes) and Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic Seven Samurai (208 minutes).  Both are perfect examples of epic storytelling, not once wasting a single moment of screen-time on needless filler.  Watching these two movies in particular makes me wish that more Hollywood movies would display more control over the content they put into their lengthier movies.  When I think about movies that wasted their time, I usually think about bloated films like the 150 minute The Lone Ranger (2013) or any of the Transformers movies.  Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) itself ran for 165 minutes, and yet I can’t even remember anything important that happened in the plot for all that running time.  Other epic films also run the risk of bloating themselves up with self-aggrandizing character monologues, which unfortunately have become a cliche of the genre.  Sometimes it works, like the pre-battle speeches in the 200 minute long The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), while other times it comes off flat like with Brad Pitt trying to sound inspirational in 163 minute Troy (2004).  When it all comes down to it, it’s all about the pacing, and whether or not you’ve used the time you have effectively.  Movies can feel big, even at a shorter length.  But, if you’ve got enough story behind it, a longer length can prove to be better.  A great movie can come in any shape or size, but a truly epic sized one really does become something special in the end, and proves why it is indeed a great experience watching a movie on the big screen.

The holiday season is unique because no other time of the year has inspired the setting for so many movies.  Many of them are of course beloved classics, whether it be Frank Capra’s immortal It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), the classic Miracle on 34th Street (1948), or even a more recent classic like A Christmas Story (1983).  And while most of these movies view the holiday with great reverence, there are also many Christmas movies that skewer the season’s traditions and still become classics, like 1987’s Scrooged or National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989).  The reason why the Christmas season has such a strong cinematic history is because no other holiday touches so many lives every year, especially given the more secularized multicultural festivities that have arisen in the holiday through the years.  Though still a distinctively Christian holiday, Christmas has become something bigger, affecting people of all religions and nationalities with charity, community and goodwill becoming the underlying meaning behind the festivities.  Most great Christmas movies reflect this and many of them have found great new ways of telling these same lessons to us year after year.  But, the Christmas season is also a colossal revenue maker for both Hollywood and the retail market, and sometimes those important meanings can be lost in favor of more superficial messages, aimed more at exploiting the holiday spirit rather than renewing it.  That’s why you see so many Christmas movies that end up being more bad than good, because they care only about the bottom end, and not about the deeper, more complex meanings.  And one movie this year managed to miss the mark so completely that it’s earned the distinction of being one of the worst movies of all time.

This movie in question comes from none other than former sitcom star turned fundamentalist Christian, Kirk Cameron.  His new film Saving Christmas examines what Cameron and the filmmakers believe is a “War on Christmas,” which is the common complaint you hear this time of year when holiday traditions are banned in the name of equality and tolerance.  And yeah, sometimes local governments can annoyingly overreach when they remove even the most harmless of Christmas symbols from public view, but Kirk Cameron believes that there is this vast conspiracy to suppress Christianity in America by secularizing the Christmas holiday.  That’s the fundamental thesis behind his new movie Saving Christmas, which bears the tagline, “Putting Christ Back in Christmas.”  Now, let me be clear, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with making a movie about Christmas that focuses on it’s religious roots.  Hollywood has done that for many years with movies like The Bishop’s Wife (1947).  Hell, you could even consider The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005) a positive Christian-themed holiday movie.  But, there’s something horribly wrong and downright dangerous with what Kirk Cameron’s movie tries to say.  In Saving Christmas, Cameron’s character confronts a religious skeptic who rightly states that many of the traditions we now associate with Christmas have been assembled together from cultures from around the world, helping to make the holiday more secular and more inclusive.  Cameron disputes this in the movie, creating all these convoluted reasons as to why modern Christmas symbols are Christian in nature, disregarding all other cultural traditions.  Cameron’s film tries to present it’s case as a positive affirmation of faith, but it instead turns into a narrow-minded proclamation of religious exceptional-ism, as if he believes that Christmas should be exclusively Christian.

It’s not surprising that this movie has been panned across the board by critics, and I don’t blame them.  I grew up celebrating Christmas both in secular and religious ways and I gained very deep understandings of how both traditions have defined the holiday season, as well as being able to differentiate the two even from a young age.  Kirk Cameron’s movie removes that differentiation in a way that unfortunately minimizes the significance of both.  Case in point, his argument in the movie as to why Christmas trees are Christian and not a tradition usurped by the Church in it’s early years in order to appeal to Pagan followers (as History clearly states), is because Christ died on a cross, which is made of wood and therefore it is a tree.  And by his logic, that is why we have a tree in our homes during Christmas.  It’s convoluted and has no scriptural basis at all, and yet Kirk Cameron states this as being a fundamental truth behind the Holiday.  I stress this again, I have no problem with Christmas movies that have a religious point-of-view.   But at the very least, have a message that makes sense.  This is the fundamental problem behind Cameron’s movie.  His Christian world view is so narrow that it’s about starting at an end point and working backwards, disregarding any evidence that may override his claims.  For him, Christian traditions trump Christian teachings, and there’s no part of scripture that he can’t rework towards his own ends.  In Saving Christmas, it’s less about learning the lessons that Christ taught us about charity and goodwill towards others, and more about finding Biblical justification for shallow and gluttonous celebrations during the holiday season.

I may be coming off a little cranky and harsh towards Kirk Cameron and his movie, but it’s only because I view his film as something that’s deeply insulting as both a fan of the Holiday season, as well as a fan of cinema.  Not only does Saving Christmas have a rotten message at it’s core, it’s also a poorly made movie as well.  I don’t know much about filmmaker Darren Doane’s career as a director, other than what I’ve read on IMDb.  He’s certainly become a go to guy for Kirk Cameron, as he’s directed the actor’s last few movies, but I’m not sure where he stands on the film’s message overall.  He may have some directorial talent, but none of that shows up here.  The movie seems to have been assembled together with little thought for set dressing, cinematography, or even script writing.  It’s as if the concept behind the project dictated everything else, and the production was quickly slapped together in order to get this thing in theaters by the Christmas season.  Don’t go into this movie expecting to see character development or a deeply involved plot.  In  fact, don’t go into it at all.  Doane probably tried the best he could to make everything coherent, but I’m sure everything was overshadowed by Kirk Cameron’s choices as Producer.  I put more of the blame on him, seeing as he wants us the audience to know that this is his project through and through, given that the full title is Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas.  But, if you’re setting yourself up for all the attention, you’re also inviting yourself into all the criticisms as well, and Cameron’s film is certainly seeing a lot of that right now.

Saving Christmas has become a landmark film in the last few weeks, not because of it’s box office success (which has been modest surprisingly, because of the help of church-based audiences), but due to how universally panned it has become.  Critical reception has been rough on this movie, with a dismal 0% on Rottentomatoes.com.  And just last week, it earned the #1 spot on IMDb’s notorious Bottom 100.  That means that it’s not just the worst movie of this year, it’s the worst movie EVER.  Yes, worse than such cinematic gems like Birdemic (2010), From Justin to Kelly (2003), or even Baby Geniuses 2 (2004).  But, I’ll give movies like Birdemic this; they’re actually hilarious to watch because of how bad they are.  Saving Christmas is just infuriating.  So, I can honestly say that no better movie is deserving of this dishonor than Saving Christmas.  Unfortunately, Kirk Cameron’s movie is not without company as far as Christmas movies go.  Christmas movies have become so abundant over the years, and very few of them are ever any good.  Saving Christmas, in it’s short time in theaters, has managed to surpass them all on IMDb’s list, so that tells you something more about it right there.  Even many Christian-centric film critics are distancing themselves from the movie, seeing as how strong the critical backlash to it’s messages have become.  But, even as repulsive as Saving Christmas is compared to all the rest, there are still a great many hate-able Christmas movies out there, and it shows that even secular based holiday fare can be rotten.

What ultimately makes a bad Christmas movie is a complete lack of understanding about the holiday spirit and more of an emphasis on the shallower aspects of the season, like focusing on the decorations or the presents.  That, or taking a traditional symbol of the season and just exploiting it for cheap gags or a convoluted message.  I can’t tell you how many different movies have centered around Santa Claus and his antics at the North Pole, and how very few of them actually present him as a genuine character, instead of making him more than an icon.  There’s also the dreaded Christmas themed comedies, which in recent years have more or less have just been trying to copy Christmas Vacation‘s formula and failing badly.  Christmas Vacation hilariously lampooned traditional family Christmas festivities, but did it with the underlying appreciation of the season and the unity of family, as oddball as they may be.  Other like-minded movies, like Deck the Halls (2006) and Christmas with the Kranks (2004) missed the mark completely by presenting no underlying message, and instead just came off as crude, mean-spirited, and superficial. Of course, one of the big problems with these bad Christmas films is that they always stress the commercial over the inspirational.  Just look at movies like the Schwarzenegger dud Jingle all the Way (1996) or the made-for-TV The Christmas Shoes (2002),  both which stress the importance of finding the right gift over anything else.  The Christmas Shoes in particular shares the same awful message with Saving Christmas, stating that commercialism is a Christian value.  Overall, there are many ways to make a horrible Christmas movie, and it ultimately comes from a lack of a moral and compassionate center.

This is especially terrible when the good message is right there in front of the filmmakers, and they refuse to actually use it.  Case in point, the truly awful remake of Dr. Suess’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), directed by Ron Howard.  The original book was a perfect expression of the Christmas Spirit, stating the need to look beyond the presents and the decorations, and instead celebrating the values of community, and the welcoming-in of outsiders.  Animator Chuck Jones brilliantly brought this story to life in his 1966 animated adaptation, which added even more depth to the character of the Grinch (voiced by Boris Karloff) by showing how the Christmas spirit changed even his cold heart, making it grow three sizes on that day.  It’s a beloved story and an equally loved animated short, both becoming standards of the season.  Ron Howard’s remake, however, strips that away by instead putting more emphasis on style over substance.  The movie adaptation devolves into merely a showcase for the art department as well for actor Jim Carrey’s comedic style (which is done under some admittedly impressive prosthetic makeup).  But the message of Dr. Suess’ story is lost midst all the Hollywood splendor.  What’s left is a movie that ultimately just rehashes all the negative aspects of the holiday, rather than stressing the good.  And most offensively, it tries to relay an anti-commercial message while at the same time trying to develop a brand for itself in a very hypocritical way.  It just shows that even a very secular take on the Christmas season can be shallow and rotten, especially when it departs from a well-laid foundation before it.

So, unfortunately like every other genre, Christmas movies have their own fair share of terrible entries.  Also unfortunate is the fact that Hollywood seems so keen on making even more holiday “classics” every year without ever attempting to actually make them good.  The Christmas season has it’s own attractive power, and Hollywood seems more content to exploit rather than renew the holiday spirit with anything new or original.  Kirk Cameron seems to believe that his film is reclaiming a part of the holiday spirit, but I think his movie only adds to the problem.  Christmas movies at their best touch the lives of people from all walks of life, filling them with universal feelings of hope and joy.  Kirk Cameron only wants to reclaim the holiday for Christianity and ignore the multi-cultural contributions that have made the holiday so special to our modern society.  What I find so peculiar about Cameron’s movie is how poorly it even sticks to it’s own principles.  We see Kirk Cameron blast attempts to take the holiday season out of the public square, and yet by arguing that everything about the holiday should have a religious basis (even the things that don’t), he is actually trying to take the holiday away from even more people.  Whether he likes it or not, Christmas is multi-cultural and a secular holiday in today’s culture, celebrated by Christians and non-Christians alike in all parts of the world.  And I think that a Holiday that links everyone together in a positive way like this is something worth celebrating.  Cameron thinks he’s being uplifting by championing the “Christ” in Christmas, but he instead is choosing to be greedy about the holiday, which is decidedly un-Christian.  And that’s why his new movie is not the present you should be opening up this Christmas season.

Festivities of the Thanksgiving weekend usually start off with a hearty dinner with family followed by socializing at either the movie theaters, or getting oneself damn near killed at the local shopping mall for Black Friday deals.  But, there’s also a long standing tradition that continues to be strong over the extended holiday weekend, and that’s the special holiday sports match-ups.  While no means crucial games in the long run, certain professional teams schedule these games for the sole purpose of exposure.  While most TV shows go on hiatus for the Thanksgiving weekend, sports programming fills that void with their special broadcasts and are able to be watched by not just their faithful fans, but also by anyone tuning in with the rest of their family.  Whatever is planned in everyone’s own Thanksgiving celebration, it’s highly likely that a good many households in America have managed to makes sports entertainment at least some part of the holiday.  And if it’s not a live event that becomes a part of the season, audiences can still get their sports fix from the world of cinema as well.  Indeed, Sports movies have become a beloved genre of film on it’s own, and many of them are released and/or watched more often this time of year than any other.  But, sports movies are in fact surprisingly varied the more you look at them as a whole, and have become beloved entertainment no matter the time of year.

Sports themes and subjects can be found in a whole variety of genre pictures.  It’s a sub-genre that isn’t as restrictively defined as others and you can easily lump a film from a whole bunch of different genres that would fit within this category.  There are sports movies that  can fall under the banner of historical films, or counter-cultural films, or even romantic comedy.  Hell, there are even sci-fi movies themed around sports.  It’s such a loose definition that some even wonder if the Sports flick should even be considered a genre at all, due to this broadness.  There is one thing for sure, however, and that there are some movies that can be described as nothing other than a sports flick, and that’s because they follow the sports movie “formula.”  That formula often involves a band of underdogs coming together, united by a common goal, and overcoming the odds in order to achieve greatness.  Sometimes, this formula is even whittled down to achievements by one gifted athlete who’s the hero of the story.  And while many sports movies do attempt to stand out from the rest, few actually do stray from the formula.  But, with a formula as common as this one, it also leads to a lot more repetitiveness.  One of the things that does plague the Sports movie genre a lot is the lack of genre-defining standouts, instead letting the formula itself be the most recognizable factor.  There are some all-time classics in the genre, but there are a lot more imitators that don’t quite rise up to the challenge and instead bleed into the background while trying to play it safe.  This is what often separates the good from the bad in the Sports genre, and given how the scales have tilted more in the favor of the negative mostly, it only makes the good ones stand out more.

First of all, let’s look at what makes a good Sports movie work.  Just like any other genre of film, it ultimately comes down to the strength of the characters and the story.  If those elements aren’t there, then the formula won’t work, and all you will be left with is a story that’s just going through the paces.  This unfortunately happens to many Sports movies, many of which don’t put the focus into the right  places.  A common problem is that many sports movies put the mechanics of the sport first, and then consider the story second, thinking that audiences won’t notice and get swept up in the in-game action.  This has been true with running through the paces movies like The Replacements (2000) or The Sixth Man (1997).  It won’t matter how gimmicky you make the situation; unless audiences care about the characters and what’s going on, it won’t matter how well the sports action is shot.  Formula is a crutch for some inexperienced filmmakers and it’s often why many of them turn to sports movies as a way to make their films look more impressive than they really are.  Sports events are filled with a lot of pageantry and drama, but that doesn’t always translate into a good story.

Human drama and competitive drama are two different things, and if you can manage to make both work together effectively at the same time, then you’ve achieved something.  Unfortunately for most sports movies, there is always that disconnect.  Even attempts to make compelling human drama can go haywire if it feels insincere.  Let’s compare this in two movies about high school football; Varsity Blues (1999) and Friday Night Lights (2004).  Varsity Blues is the lesser of the two because of the in-authenticity of it’s emotions.  It’s heavy-handed in it’s human drama and flashy in it’s depiction of it’s on-field action.  Friday Night Lights on the other hand treats it’s subject with a lot more restraint.  It still has the human drama throughout, but it’s better integrated with the action on the field, making both feel just as integral to the overall story.  It’s that balance that ultimately makes the sports movie formula work.  Had Varsity Blues not tried too hard to make their story emotional, then it might have felt more authentic.  Instead, the movie appealed more to the teenage soap opera crowd (which makes sense considering who made up the movie’s cast) and felt less like a film about the heart and soul of Football, which Friday Night Lights captures much more perfectly.  In that film, you get a better sense of how the different characters lives are intertwined and motivated by the sports they play, and how much winning means to them.  You see this in their struggles at home, sometimes showing kids dealing with abuse, and also in how the head coach (played by Billy Bob Thornton) can unite a team around all this turmoil and make his players believe they are winners.  That helps us the audience feel more involved once the players take the field and snap the ball.  It’s that balance between story and action that ultimately helps to make the good sports movie stand out.

If there is a Sports genre that has had a better track record than the rest, it is the Sports biopic.  Athletes are often the great legendary heroes of our modern age, and what better way to celebrate their accomplishments than with a film based on their life.  While these movies also fall into formula many times, they can still manage to overcome them if the true-to-life story is compelling enough.  And the history of Sports is not short of interesting subjects.  But, again, it’s all in how you go about depicting these people and what they’ve done that makes the movies work.  Case in point, a good sports movie would be the 1994 biopic Cobb, which featured Tommy Lee Jones as the notoriously brutish, and psychotic baseball player Ty Cobb.  That movie is fascinating to watch because it shows the life and career of a very flawed man whose actions feel so out of line by today’s standards that it helps us to learn more about how the sport of Baseball has evolved.  Contrast this with 1948’s The Babe Ruth Story, which white-washed the true story of a very flawed person who ended up becoming one of the world’s greatest athlete, and it inadvertently makes his life story feel dull in the process.  The more fascinating the individual, the more introspective the movie must be, and even if it’s showing the less flattering elements of a person’s life, all the better because it at least humanizes the person and makes them feel more relatable.  Sometimes using creative license even helps.  The recent Jackie Robinson flick 42 plays around with the events of the groundbreaking baseball player’s life, like the extent of the relationship he had with the team’s owner, as well as making up whole chapters of his life and career.  But, after seeing the final result, that matters very little, because what 42 gets right is the sense of Jackie Robinson the character, and the struggle with which he had to overcome.  Creative license may be a cheat, but it’s a cheat that can deliver a better impact.

This is a formula that has been very true not just for biopics, but for depictions of great sports events as well.  Sometimes, the best thing that a sports movie can do is to shed light on a great moment that happened in any particular sport, and how that left an impact on history.  These kinds of movies usually fall under the banner of the underdog story.  One of the best examples of this would be the 1986 Basketball film, Hoosiers.  Hoosiers is interesting because it doesn’t depict the story of some great professional team, or even one of the most earth-shattering upsets in sports history either.  It instead focuses on a more universal story of a small Indiana town whose High School team beat the big city school and won the state championship out of nowhere.  Doesn’t sound all that unusual, right?  Well, when you see the movie, you find that it is less about the game itself and more about the people who made it happen, which includes a coach with a shady past (a brilliant Gene Hackman), his troublesome alcoholic assistant (Dennis Hopper), and a group of working class kids who’ve been told they’ll never amount to anything.  The movie makes the final game feel much more important because of all the negative factors that have worked against these characters and it stresses how they’ve persevered against it.  It makes us root for the underdog probably better than any other sports movie ever, and it’s all because it plays upon our desires to see winners deserve their victory and challenge the established order of things.  Other underdog Sports movies do a good job of playing up the underdog formula, like Rudy (1993) and Miracle (2004), but few have made something so small feel so grandiose as Hoosiers did.

True stories seem to be the bulk of what we would describe as a sports movie, but like I stated before, sports work their way into all kinds of genres, some better than others.  Really, even at a young age, we are shown sports as an everyday element of our lives.  There are tons of family films geared to younger audiences that have a sports theme to them; although, for every charming Little Giants (1994) and Rookie of the Year (1993) that we get so often, there are about a dozen or so stupid Air Bud (1997) movies.  A great example from my childhood would be the brilliant The Sandlot (1993), which centered around baseball, but proved to be about so much more.  Sports comedies are also a noteworthy sub-genre.  Some take the sport they depict seriously, like Bull Durham (1988) and Major League (1989), becoming comedic purely through the eccentric personalities of their players.  And then there are the sports movies that savagely ridicule their selective sports, and yet still manage to be beloved by the sports’ same die hard fans.  Caddyshack (1980) mocks every conceivable convention of the sport of Golf, and yet I bet you won’t find a movie that is more commonly quoted on a golf course than it. Formula can also work as a negative sometimes with these kinds of films, which is double troublesome when the formulas of two different genres are in play.  This is particularly true with romantic movies centered around sports.  In my opinion, I see making a sports movie with a romantic plot as being the same kind of pandering towards a male demographic as shoehorning a love story into an action movie panders to a female demographic.  It feels inauthentic and cheap both ways.  This has often led to awful hybrids like Fever Pitch (2005) and Summer Catch (2001).  Though female athletes aren’t without their own classic sports film.  A League of their Own (1992) managed to appeal to audiences of all genders and did so by following all the same rules that make up any good sports movie.  Not to mention, it’s a movie geared towards woman that also features one of the greatest and oft quoted tough guy lines ever in a sports: “THERE’S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL.”

So, why do some sports movies have such a lasting resonance while others don’t?  I think it’s because of the fact that you’re trying to work two forms of entertainment together and make them feel like they’re the same thing.  We watch both to feel entertained, but experiencing the ups and downs of a movie is quite different than those of a live sporting event.  Drama in sports comes from a lot of factors.  It’s sometimes not what’s going on the field that matters to us, but rather the implications that the game means in the larger picture that we find so intriguing.  The lives of the athletes outside the sport and the baggage they carry with them can often impact our outlook on the game.  Sometimes it’s our hometown pride, or our wanting to see the smaller team undo the lofty expectations of the bigger team, in order to shake things up and make them more interesting that we enjoy.  In any case, these are things that are hard to translate into film.  Usually the success of a sports movie rests on the effectiveness of capturing that aura around the big games.  That, or they effectively use sports as backdrop for the interesting character dramas.  Overall, there are many films that fall short, but it only highlights the ones that are destined to become classics.  Though not particularly bound to the Thanksgiving season, these movies nevertheless have a customary presence around this time of year, especially when they play such a memorable role in the way it makes you value the role of sports in the larger cultural narrative.  They even serve as good counter-programming when the live games themselves become boring.  The Sports movie genre may seem formulaic to many, and continues to follow stringent genre rules more than some, but it’s also one of the most varied, and engaging of all cinematic genres.  And when done right, it can even make a happy ending feel all the more worth it.  And that’s certainly worth cheering for.