Zucker's antihero protagonist is Michael Malone (played by Kevin Farley, look-alike brother of the late Chris Farley), a Michigan-born, New York-based, America-hating documentary filmmaker wearing a baseball cap. Anybody without a lobotomy will recognize that Zucker is parodying Michael Moore - but Zucker doesn't trust his audience, so he goes even further by showing "Malone" extolling the virtues of Cuban health care and organizing a student protest to abolish the Fourth of July.

Then Malone, in keeping with the movie's Dickensian title, is visited by the ghost of John F. Kennedy (impersonated, badly, by Chriss Anglin), who berates Malone's anti-military tirades with a warning that he will be visited by three spirits. Those ghosts turn out to be Gen. George S. Patton (Kelsey Grammer), George Washington (Jon Voight) and the angel of death (played by country singer Trace Adkins) - delivering heavy-handed messages about Neville Chamberlain, slavery, tenured academia and the ACLU (whose lawyers are depicted as zombies).

Now, one wouldn't expect one of the makers of "Airplane!" to be subtle, but you'd at least think he occasionally would be funny. You would be wrong, as Zucker and co-writers Myrna Sokoloff and Lewis Friedman shoot ineffectually at dated targets (Jimmy Carter?), jumping uncomfortably from lame slapstick to serious self-righteousness - none worse than an awkwardly staged visit to the still-smoldering wreckage of the World Trade Center.

Zucker's premise is also blatantly hypocritical. He derides Hollywood excess, but hires Paris Hilton for a cameo. He depicts Michael Moore - oops, I mean Malone - as a danger to American freedom, but also as inconsequential because nobody watches documentaries.

Any filmgoer, regardless of political stripe, should be able to recognize "An American Carol" as shameless pandering to the right wing. But, then again, maybe Zucker has been listening to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and figured, "Hey, if they can bamboozle conservative America, why can't I?"

Sean P. Means can be reached at movies@sltrib.com or 801-257-8602. Send comments about this review to livingeditor@ sltrib.com.