I am no great fan of Kirk Cameron films.  His latest, Saving Christmas, is currently derided far and wide as one of the worst films ever made.  Its rating on Rotten Tomatoes is a vainglorious 0%, while IMDB lists the film as No. 1 on its “Bottom 100.”

In the blogosphere, being right is often a matter of selecting the correct bandwagon to follow.  Truth is primarily irrelevant.

After all, we’re told incessantly that the cornerstone of modern American society is tolerance.  But the reality is just the opposite: American society is intolerant as hell, provided the object of our animus is one of those white male Anglo-Saxon Christians who won’t fight back.

Ecce homo, Kirk Cameron.

So, the other day, I caught this gem of tolerance on Failblog:

[T]he "Chicago Sun-Times" says "this may be one of the least artful holiday films ever made. Even devout born-again Christians will find this hard to stomach."

Despite the harsh reviews, Cameron attempted to save his own movie by begging people on Facebook to upvote the disaster on Rotten Tomatoes.

Disaster?  Can we truthfully say that a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes is an objective indicator of failure?  Rotten Tomatoes surveys one hundred film critics (not singers in a church choir) who give a simple thumbs-up or down in lieu of a review.  So to say that Saving Christmas has a zero rating is to say that one hundred secular critics didn’t like a religious-themed film.  The degree to which they didn’t like it – or why – is not addressed.  Failure to please any of a hundred critics?  Yes.  Abject and derisive failure of the film?  A matter of opinion, unsupported by the evidence.

Further, is it true to say that Cameron resorted to begging to save his movie?  Here, via Facebook, is Cameron’s offending post:

All of you who love Saving Christmas – go rate it at Rotten Tomatoes right now and send the message to all the critics that WE decide what movies we want our families to see! If 2,000 of you (out of almost 2 million on this page) take a minute to rate Saving Christmas, it will give the film a huge boost and more will see it as a result!

Please point to the word or phrase where the begging takes place.  No, I don’t see it, either. 

Further, Cameron doesn’t say that all two million of his followers, including those who haven’t seen his film, should descend upon Rotten Tomatoes like the Israelites against the Philistines.  Nor, by the way, does he say what rating they should give it.

Yet his tolerant detractors accuse him of just that.  From the comments following Cameron’s Facebook post:

You're asking your fans, whether they've seen your movie or not and whether they've liked your movie or not, to give it a positive review.

[snip]

In other words, you are asking people to lie. You are asking them to lie so that your movie, a movie ostensibly about the crass over-commercialisation [sic] of Christmas, can be a bigger commercial success.

Really?

WWJD?

Yes.  What, indeed, would Jesus do?  Perhaps he would start with actually reading Cameron’s post before going off on it.  Quite clearly, Cameron’s marching orders are being issued to “All of you who love Saving Christmas” – not anyone and everyone, regardless of whether they’ve seen the movie.  So if there’s any lying, it’s in asserting that he’s asking people to lie.

And Cameron’s goal?  Maybe he wanted to make the film a bigger commercial success.  Or maybe he had something else in mind.

Here’s a suggestion: maybe he wanted to “give the film a huge boost” so that more people would see it – not to rake in more profits, but to better disseminate the film’s message: that Christmas is not just some reconfiguration of pagan celebrations, but something much more significant.  

A laudable message, however poorly it is executed.

So here’s my take.  By all means, please see Saving Christmas.  Or don’t.  But try not to let the pilers-on dictate what film you should or shouldn’t see.