Kirk Cameron Begs Fans To Save ‘Saving Christmas’ Through Positive Reviews — But His Plan Backfires

Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas hasn’t been getting such great reviews, it seems. Now the former child star-turned-Evangelical Christian is begging his Facebook fans to rate the movie, and prove to critics that consumers can make their own choices about movies.

On Rotten Tomatoes, Cameron’s Christmas movie has only one favorable critic review out of ten, and the average rating is 2.9 out of 10 — not exactly rave reviews. The audience rating, though, is 63 percent positive, with an average rating of 3.3 out of 5, and over 4,000 reviews.

Perhaps Saving Christmas simply sits better with audiences than with critics — there’s no question that it’s aimed at a niche audience, and that critics consider movies for a more general appeal. Maybe, though, Kirk’s Facebook post inspired some followers to rush over and try to improve the rating.

It’s certain, however, that his followers are commenting and sharing his post, promising to help “fix” the ratings and save Saving Christmas.

“I’ll do it! The movie is wonderful. Took my family to see it Saturday. The kids loved it too! Keep Christ in CHRISTmas!”

“I understand….. In the movie industry these numbers count… My family wants to send a clear message to those in the movie industry these are the type of movies our family is intrested in watching…. We voted Kirk”

Of course, Cameron is also taking some criticism — many comments accuse him of trying to artificially inflate the numbers, and call the movie a “religious cash grab” or suggest that it truly is a “rotten tomato,” but there’s no shortage of fans posting praise.

At a glance, it may even appear that Kirk’s efforts are working, but a glance wouldn’t be sufficient here: It would be relevant to realize that at the time of Cameron’s post, the audience ratings were actually higher than they currently are. In fact, in the early hours of Friday morning, the audience rating sat at about 94 percent.

Perhaps Cameron’s efforts have actually backfired — he drew attention to Saving Christmas, and the Facebook post, which boasts over 10k shares, reached a number of people who clicked the link and gave the movie a low rating, instead. Actually, that’s almost exactly what happened — the post made it to Reddit’s Atheism community, where user nomames_bro made this suggestion.

As you can see, in this image, almost 12 hours after Cameron’s post, the audience rating is still at 92 percent.

Of course, the question of whether it’s honest or moral to rate a movie for reasons other than your actual enjoyment of it is the the same whether you’re upvoting or downvoting, though it’s only fair to point out that Cameron did offer the caveat that only those who loved the movie were being asked to improve the rating.

Still, Saving Christmas is floundering, with the audience rating dropping so fast it may soon match the critic rating. Can Kirk Cameron save Saving Christmas?