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'American Carol' lampoons the left

Director David Zucker, left, and actor Kevin Farley.

LOS ANGELES — It's a movie genre you don't hear much about in Hollywood: the right-wing comedy. For that matter, it's not much of a genre at all.

But it's exactly what conservative producer-director-screenwriter David Zucker created with "An American Carol." The gag-filled liberal lampoon stars Kevin Farley, brother of the late Chris Farley, as a scruffy Michael Moore clone named Michael Malone, an infamous documentary filmmaker leading a slapstick campaign to abolish the Fourth of July.

"I didn't tell anyone, not even my brother John, I had this part," said Farley, sitting in a conference room chair across from Zucker at Vivendi Entertainment, the film's distributor. "We wanted to keep it close to the vest. Meanwhile, I'm growing a beard and getting fatter. I had just gone through a divorce, and my brother was like, 'You need help!"'

Zucker acknowledges the release of "An American Carol" is timed to the election, when politics is a hot topic, but he doubts the spoof, which features cameos from the likes of Bill O'Reilly, James Woods, Jon Voight and — believe it — Paris Hilton, has the power to influence voters. His intention is to inspire laughs, not change political perspectives.

"I'm always looking for new targets," said Zucker. "In this town, you're only as good as your last target. First, it was disaster movies with 'Airplane!' Then, it was 'Dirty Harry' with 'The Naked Gun.' And then it was horror movies that were silly with the 'Scary Movie' films. Here, we're finally taking on the excesses of the far left in politics."

"An American Carol" mixes the narrative of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" with Fox News fodder. Leslie Nielsen narrates the tale about Scoorge-ish director Malone stumbling through political-tinted fantasy sequences. A slap-happy General George S. Patton (played by Kelsey Grammer) serves as Malone's patriotic ghost of politics past.

Because the movie was filmed months ago, audiences won't see timely jabs about the election, although a mention of the Democratic presidental nominee almost made the cut. In what Zucker said might be the film's most controversial scene, Malone travels to a world where President Abraham Lincoln didn't fight the Civil War and slavery was never abolished.

Moore is hardly alone in the film's cross hairs. "An American Carol" roasts jihadists, Rosie O'Donnell, college professors, Neville Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler, President Jimmy Carter and chanting protesters.

"The intent is not to make people angry," said Zucker. "To get laughs, you have to deal with outrage. You can't be mild in comedy. In movies where I've been mild, they haven't been successful. You can be mild on television, but to get people out of their houses and into a movie theater, you have to do something they haven't seen before.

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