"The American spirit is celebrated in the outrageous and totally irreverent comedy..."

That's how some publicity for the new movie An American Carol begins. You may have seen ads on television recently for the film. The ads make pretty clear what the intended satirical premise is:

A left-wing documentary filmmaker, with an obvious resemblance to Michael Moore, is visited by three spirits to teach him "the true meaning of America."

It's directed and co-written by David Zucker, who, after peaking early with Airplane! has made more bad films than good ones. Will this be one of the good? I dunno, but the odds are against it. Of his two co-writers, only one has a previously produced feature to their credit--and that was BASEketball.

But here's what grabbed my attention. Does it seem to anybody else unlikely that this movie both "celebrates the American spirit" and is "totally irreverent?"

It's hard be totally irreverent--which means "lacking proper respect or seriousness"--and also celebrate anything, much less "the American spirit." Groucho Marx could've done it (maybe) but Groucho Marx was a great clown.

And I'm pretty sure his definition of "the American Spirit" was more liberal than that of Bush Republicans Zucker and his stars Kelsey Grammer, Jon Voight, James Woods and Dennis Hopper.