December 8, 2014
'Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas' Has the Lowest IMDb Rating
EDGE READ TIME: 2 MIN.
The critics have weighed in and the people have spoken: the biggest piece of turkey leftover from Thanksgiving is "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas."
With an average 1.5 star rating out of a possible 10, "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas" holds the distinction of being the lowest rated movie ever on user-driven website IMDb's "Bottom 100" list of all time terrible films.
In an entry titled "This movie shattered my faith," one IMDb user wrote:
"I was a devout Christian until I watched this movie. I can no longer believe in God because I can't believe that he would allow someone to make this garbage in his name... I am now exploring Satanism. Thank you Kirk Cameron. "
In another entry titled "Kirk Cameron's Low Budget Soapbox" an IMDb user wrote:
"It's basically a feature length sermon, and a crappy one at that. There are literally NO redeeming qualities in this film. The camera work is extremely amateurish, and the acting and direction were absolutely abysmal. I had extremely low expectations for this, and it still managed to be disappointing."
Perhaps some of the harshest criticism came from a Christian user's post titled "Kirk Cameron isn't 'saving Christmas' he's desecrating it":
"Saving Christmas" is in direct violation of Romans 14:5-6 and 22-23, twists Scripture, reconstructs history and encourages gluttony.
There's nothing in this film that is "wholesome" and good for anyone, believer or non-believer.
Let's save others from Kirk and crew's version of Christ's first coming and celebrate (if your conscience allows) with reverence, awestruck wonder and with the true and great joy that envelopes all who are humbled by and grateful for God's most amazing Gift--Jesus Christ, the one and only Son of God."
So much for the film's tagline "Put Christ Back in Christmas."
All of this has culminated in the religious right's purported annual "war on Christmas" being extended into the "war on 'Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas'"
On the film's website, a post from fan of the film made mention of P.T. Barnum's quip about "no such thing as bad publicity," and ironically cited Oscar Wilde's quote "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." The post attributes the film's "success" to the bad publicity that has surrounded it since it opened to scathing reviews in mid-November.
Although the holiday movie has been held-over from its original one week scheduled engagement, as JoeMyGod points out, according to Monday's report from Box Office Mojo, "Saving Christmas" played on 294 screens this weekend, a 17-screen increase from last week after opening on 410 screens two weeks ago. The film's per screen average of $495 was the lowest of all films tracked. With an average ticket price of $8, that means a total of about 33 people attended this weekend's 15 showings at each theater. That's two people per showing. But everybody got a great seat!