Recommended. Funny little Indie movie about Geeks winning. Quirky, clean, character-driven comedy. Amazingly clean. I must applaud the Mormon filmmakers for making clean look cool. Quite an example for Christians and others who are trying to bring influence on the values of movies they make without capitulating to cheese and preachiness. What I didn’t like was that it was so character focused, that it dragged a bit in the middle. You can only enjoy so many scenes of the Nerdy title character and his oddball interactions with his dopey friends so much and then you start begging for some story. Character ain’t enough to drive a story, but it sure helps tremendously in our character-starved plot heavy movie culture. So it’s a good change of pace with a refreshing freedom and simplicity that you just don’t see from studio films because of their obsession with formula, marketing and justifying corporate executive jobs.
Comedy
Dodgeball
Not Really Recommended. Story of a smelly old loser gym owned by slacker Vince Vaughn, being overtaken by high tech infomercial Exercise Emperor Ben Stiller. So the slobs of Joe’s Gym join the Dodgeball circuit to win the money they need to keep their pit alive. Vaughn sleepwalks through this lazy slacker with a heart of gold part that he has made so popular. Looks like he’s bored with it. But Ben Stiller is excellent as the body worshipping self-deified health obsessed entrepreneur. Some GREAT jabs at the whole self-worshipping culture that has grown up around the exercise industry. Shows the true fleshly nature of ascetic lifestyle. Favorite joke in the movie: when a crippled Dodgeball hero played by Rip Torn is training the losers. He has them run across a highway busy with speeding cars and says, “If you can dodge traffic, you can dodge balls.”
Saved!
Not Recommended. This movie is bitter bigoted hate speech against Christians. Hysterical witch-hunting for “Christian witches.” But in the interest of not succumbing to the same imbalanced criticism against the movie that the movie propogates against evangelical Christianity, I will first note the positive. Every criminal has some good traits. The story is about a young girl, Mary, at a Christian school who tries to “save” her boyfriend from turning gay by sleeping with him. When she gets pregnant, she has to hide her shame and deal with the “queen Christian” in the school, self-righteous Hilary Faye (An obvious reference to Tammy Faye Bakker) played by Mandy Moore. Mary hangs out with the rebels, a crippled non-Christian, and the lone Jewish girl at the school who is there only because her other choice was homeschooling. She eventually gives up her evangelical faith for a humanistic faith in herself and her feelings. These filmmakers have clearly had some experience either in the Evangelical subculture or know some who are in it, because it captures some of the bad side of it rather well: prayer as a weapon of gossip, “God told me” baloney, Jesus as a cover for every kind of selfish pursuit, Jesus marketing, frauds, hypocrites etc. I actually agree in part with the critique that Evangelical subculture has become a fraudulent marketed substitute for secular culture with the same selfishness covered over in platitudes and rationalizations. The Christian subculture with it’s Christian versions of everything; Christian schools, Christian books, Christian music, Christian T-Shirts, and even Christian vices has become a pathetic pseudo-reality that too often fails to address the real evils of society. The panacea for all problems is “Accept Jesus into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior.” Well I agree with the filmmakers here. There is a form of this kind of subculture that exists and it is wrong. However, that subculture is not necessarily real Christianity and aye, there’s the rub. In this movie, all Christians are portrayed as hypocrites, losers, liars, and frauds. There is not a single authentic biblical Christian in the entire movie against which such exploitation is measured. Someone who lives out the teachings of Jesus with compassion yet a hatred for sin; loving, but righteous. Therefore, the filmmakers are not critiquing the abuse of Christianity, they think that twisted version IS Christianity. That is how you sniff out bigotry and propaganda in a film like this. And in the end, the homosexual, the handicapped kid, the Jew, the pregnant girl are all aligned against, the “Christian” lead, a self-righteous Fem played by Mandy Moore. Of course, there are no black people there because Christianity is, according to these filmmakers, not for them either. In other words, cast the Christian as against these special interests and “diversity” so they will hate Christians too. It appears that Christians are one of the few acceptable people groups to hate and attack in this country. Imagine a movie that focused on the homosexual community that showed all the homosexuals as either hypocrites, losers, liars or frauds. They’d be attacked by the ACLU and GLAAD and branded as sexist hate-mongers. Imagine a movie that focused on a school of African Americans that showed all the blacks as either hypocrites, losers, liars or frauds. They’d be attacked by the ACLU, and the NAACP and branded as racist hate-mongers. Imagine a movie that focused on a Jewish school that showed all Jews as either hypocrites, losers, liars or frauds. They’d be attacked by the ACLU and the ADL and branded as Anti-Semitic hate-mongers. But I guess it’s okay to make a movie that shows all Christians as either hypocrites, losers, liars or frauds. The movie mocks good things as if they were bad. It paints gun owners as gun nuts, it mocks secondary virginity, recovery from destructive behavior, clean lifestyles, prayer, faithfulness in marriage, worship music, interventions, etc. The irony is that this movie is so bitter and unfunny that it will probably do terrible business. It rings with bitterness and hatred, not truth. I gotta say, how ironic it is for Mandy Moore, to act in a movie that mocks Christians, after starring in A Walk To Remember, that elevates Christian teens in a similar context of high school. Of course, authentic Christians would not endorse the silly and false Christianity presented in the movie. They would mock it as well. But the problem lies in the propaganda, the poisoning of the well, the special pleading. The answer the story gives for false Christianity is not true Christianity, but HUMANISTIC FEELINGS. Pretty much standard fare for Hollywood. Follow your heart, your feelings and that’s truth. I wrote an entire chapter on this in my book, Hollywood Worldviews. As an adulterous woman tells her preacher partner (of course, gotta have the sexually fallen preacher, another typical cliché of Antichristian agitprop), “Why would God give us these feelings if what we are doing is wrong?” The heroine at the end of the film says, “Life is perfect. There has to be a God out there – or in us. You just have to feel it.” Of course, the god that the humanist proposes to substitute for the Biblical God is a god called ME. God is in us, which really means “we are god.” The gay struggling with his homosexuality is affirmed in his feelings, the adulterers are affirmed in their feelings, the fornicators are affirmed in their feelings. Rebels are affirmed in their feelings. (Everyone is affirmed in their feelings EXCEPT the Christian. THEIR feelings are not legitimate). Sorry, folks, but I got a news flash. If your answer to an alleged self-righteous morality of restraint is “feelings,” without a moral standard to judge and restrain those feelings (since you’ve just denied moral restraint), then you’ve just disallowed any criticism of racists, child molesters, rapists and serial killers. They have feelings too. And their feelings tell them what they’re doing is okay, and who are you to judge? When you take away that standard of moral restraint, then stop griping about a society saturated with drug addicted kids, kids killing kids, pregnant kids, kid monsters without moral restraint. That’s all the result of your “feelings” oriented morality – or lack thereof. Here’s another whopping irony: The goal of the movie is to show the Christian subculture as homogenous, comformist, and the rebels are the heros, the ones who defy such conformity. The heroine asks, “Why would Jesus have made us all so different if he wanted us to all be the same?” Funny, last time I looked, this pluralistic culture we live in is the comformist homogeneity. Relative “gray” ethics is the hegemony. Christianity is not welcomed in the public square. Christians are the true counter-cultural force, the true rebels. I mean come on, normalization of sexual perversion on every level, abortion on demand, God out of government and schools. This is a post-Christian world, folks, and inmates have taken over the asylum. Think about it for a second, the “rebels” in this movie aren’t non-conformists, they are clichés of conformity carted in from what is the true homogenous society of dominant public schools. Christian schools are the anomaly. Christian schools and homschoolers are the true non-conformists in our world. TEEN REBELS are the real conformists, not the Christian. The Christian is the true rebel in this world, yet like usual, humanistic relativist filmmakers turn the truth literally upside down and try to make the victims guilty of the crime. Morality is the problem, not immorality. It is moral people that somehow are guilty of the consequences of the immoral behavior of immoral people. Christians cause teen pregnancy, abortions, sexual diseases and criminal behavior, not the true moral criminals. Such reverse logic actually prefers promiscuity, teen pregnancy, rebellion, adultery, as good and considers abstinent clean obedient kids to be the real evil. Can there BE anything more backward?
Isaiah 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;
Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
(Now, the anti-Christian would consider quoting a Bible verse to be self-righteous. But think again. Who is self-righteous – the person who points to God to define righteousness or the person who points to themself [their feelings] to define righteousness?)
Shrek 2
Recommended for adults. Funny. Very funny. A good sequel, which is hard to do. It revisits the original movie’s theme that beauty and love is in the eye of the beholder, and trying to be someone you are not or measure up to society’s definitions of beauty and fashion is harmful. The problem I had with it is that it attempted to add to this theme the idea that cross-dressers and transvestites, and other perversities are part of the “goodness” of being yourself. Pinnochio wears women’s underwear and Cinderella’s wicked stepsister is actually a male cross-dresser or transvestite who owns a bar. The whole point is that, though given the magical opportunity to change herself and Shrek into beautiful “Royal Family” looking people rather than ogres, Princess Fiona chooses not to because that’s not who she married. It would be untrue to Shrek and herself. Well, the logical extension is to show other characters in the story who are victims of such social standards of “imposed” identities and fashion. These characters, then, by extension, are also reflections of the heroine’s own redemption (ala the Pinnochio and the wicked stepsister). It’s easy to see how the filmmakers considered bizarre perversions to be part and parcel of that redemption. Without an absolute moral standard to define good and bad social norms, ALL variety of human identity becomes legitimate. They just don’t realize the Frankenstein monster they’ve created.
Starsky and Hutch
Not recommended. A few laughs of satire about the old show and 70s style cop shows, but all in all, a bit too crude.
Calendar Girls
Hard to recommend. This is another movie that has some wonderful character moments, great lines, real humanity to it, even some fine subthemes about compassion and character, but suffers the problem of pragmatic morality, a spiritually heinous deception. It’s a true story about some elderly women in the Women’s Institute in North Yorkshire, England, who take their clothes off in order to raise funds for a hospital in memory of a husband who dies of cancer. Simple as that, the whole story plays extremely well on the irony of women who are otherwise past their prime, and past relevancy in the modern world. But this story brings out their beauty, character and value as each one struggles with overcoming this stigma. According to the deceased man, “the Women of Yorkshire are like the flowers of Yorkshire. Their last stages are more beautiful than their first. — And then they go to seed.” It’s a compelling tale that focuses on two women who struggle with their friendship, newfound fame and truly helping people vs. personal glory. All good themes. What happens is that the women make the calendar, a monthly display of the mature women in their gardens and kitchens in the nude, (not naked!), to raise money to actually do some good, which the organization has a reputation for, but little experience in. The calendar is “tastefully” done without showing privates, and the scenes are also humorous without exploiting. What happens is that it becomes a surprise megahit, going all the way to Hollywood, that ultimately raises half a million pounds for cancer research. So the central premise of this movie is that it is okay to violate public norms of decency if it is for a good cause. In other words, the ends justifies the means. Pragmatic morality. The brilliance of drama is that through humor and universal identification with lovable characters, the average person will see this and figure, “yeah, hey, it wasn’t skanky, and they did it for good, so what the hey?” And that is the diabolical brilliance of pragmatic morality. It addresses the moral tension of two opposing values by pulling the heartstrings in order to divert attention from one of the values. The real evil of pragmatic morality is not understood until one takes it to the logical conclusion: If the ends justify the means, then it is okay to kill poor people to get rid of poverty. “Outrageous!” would be the response of most people. “Why that doesn’t justify killing people!” Ah, but if the ends justify the means, then it does. The second you start putting moral obligation onto the means and judging it, you have just admitted that both means AND ends should be morally judged, so one does not justify the other. And if you apply morality to some means and not to others, then you are being arbitrary or prejudicial, which is the deathknell of your ethic. The bottom line is that both ends and means are accountable to morality, and therefore, one cannot justify public nudity because “it accomplishes some good.” Public nudity is right or wrong whether or not it accomplishes good.
Cheaper By the Dozen
Recommended. This is a wonderful comedy about a big family that elevates family as more important than career and personal ambition. Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt play the fun-loving parents of twelve kids, who manage to maintain a controlled chaos. When Steve gets the job opportunity of a lifetime, to coach his old alma mater football team, the family moves, against the wishes of the kids, out of their rural life into Evanston Illinois. The tension is magnified when Bonnie has to leave for a couple weeks for a book tour for her surprise hit sale of a book to a major publishing house. Ironically, the book is called Cheaper by the Dozen. So Steve has to watch the kids right in the middle of important new job responsibilities. His job dictates more and more time away, until the home falls apart because he is not there as much as he needs to be. He ultimately chooses his family over career. I must say that big families will love this film, but I gotta say that with all the laughs, about half way through I started thinking that I certainly would not. But I loved it just the same for it’s goodness and wholesome view of life. Lovable realistic kids with problems and issues. But they all draw together in times of need.
Something’s Gotta Give
Recommended with caution. Finally, a movie about an older man who falls in love with a woman his own age, rather than the age of his daughter. For that, I loved this film. And of course, only a woman could have written it and directed it because of the adolescent understanding that most men in the business have of relationships. Of course, the fornication in this story is not recommendable, but the story about an aged man who finally grows up is very satisfying and mature.
Stuck on You
Recommended. A Farrelly brothers comedy about a pair of conjoined twins (NOT Siamese! Conjoined!) played by Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear. For those concerned, this is probably the least offensive of the Farrelly brother movies, Me, Myself and Irene being the most offensive. It’s the story of these brothers who are total opposites in personality yet they find a harmony in sacrificial love for one another and the ability to work together as complimentary opposites. Matt gives up his freedom because he decided against the operation that would separate them. Why? Because he had most of the liver and that would jeopardize Greg’s life, so he chose his brother’s life over his freedom Wow, what sacrifice. Then Greg wants to become an actor in Hollywood and Matt is horrified since he has major stage fright. Not to mention the obvious impossibility of conjoined twins actually acting in movies. But of course, the impossible happens and Greg gets to costar with Cher in a TV show ( A wonderfully surprising self-lampooning by Cher as a snippy, self-obsessed, image obsessed, spoiled has-been superstar). Eventually, Greg decides to push for the separation operation because he sees that Matt is miserable in Hollywood and wants to go back to their small town. So Greg sacrifices and risks his safety so his brother can find his dreams since Greg got to find his. It’s all really rather touching and a great tale about brotherly love and self sacrifice for the happiness of others. It’s also about finding harmony in complimentarity, opposites can find interdependency as well as independence in a harmony, if we only compromise with giving love for one another. It’s about how true deformity and inhumanity lies in the Hollywood abuse of people and themselves. The people around these brothers are more disabled than they are. It’s ultimately about connectedness and interdependence, those things we all look for, but for which few are willing to pay the price. Also, what I love about the Farrelly brothers is that they use real people in their films who are otherwise discriminated against in Hollywood: the untouchables, the handicapped. Not just the actors playing handicapped, but actual handicapped actors playing roles. And they use them in loving ways without patronizing them. They address the ridicule that these precious people receive with a straight up honesty, but always have them rise above it with their own dignity. This is genuine and authentic human filmmaking. Tons of laughs and tons of beautiful humanity.
Elf
Recommended with Qualification. Will Ferrel is a human that was abandoned as a baby and through happenstance ended up at Santa’s home in the North Pole. So he is raised as an elf until he discovers one day he is actually human and sets out to search for his father who lives in New York. Of course, the father, played by James Caan, is a selfish SOB who doesn’t want anything to do with Will. The laughs come from the Elf’s naieve innocence in contrast with the cynical lost people of the city. But he wins everyone’s heart, including Caan’s, and a love interest as well. Sweet, sweet, sweet. This film is funny, warm-hearted, endearing, has some good values and is totally clean. And best of all, it’s theme is that innocence wins. So why don’t I recommend it? I want to, I really do. I wanted to support a wholesome valued movie. But values are more than the lack of sex and violence. They are also about worldviews. The reason I recommend with qualification is because it is a mythology that intentionally obscures the true and sacred meaning of Christmas: Jesus Christ. That’s right: Christ-Mass. I’m not against secular mythology per se. I have no problem with using prevailing mythologies or genres subversively to communicate good values. In fact, I’m not even against all Santa Claus movies, sight unseen. It’s just that I know that the Santa Claus myth has developed with the intent to divert attention from the true and sacred source of grace and redemption, and for that reason it is personally offensive. Now, I know that the fat old man in red was based upon St. Nick who was originally a Christian. But in this case, the man in red is more like the devil because of what he has become: a smoke screen obscuring the “true spirit” of Christmas. Let’s be honest, there is nothing about “St. Nick” in this popular image as he appears in this movie (And I’m sure radical activist Ed Asner certainly wouldn’t have played Santa if there was). And I know that Christmas was originally a pagan festival called “Saturnalia” that the Roman Catholic Church took over and reinvented as Christmas. And this is exactly what the Santa Claus myth has done, stolen back the Christian holy day and redefined it in secular terms of human goodness WITHOUT God. You know, naughty and nice, which is ultimately a system of salvation by good works. Pure balderdash. Damning balderdash at that. So the pagans have stolen the holy day back and made it a mere holiday that diverts man’s attention from the one thing he needs most: A Savior. That is the sacrilege of it. That is the rape of the Christian mythology.
The movie is all about innocence lost in a cynical selfish culture. Great intentions, bad results. And you know, it would not take much for me to turn around and change everything I just said. If only the storytellers had tied in the true meaning of Christmas, even subtley, in the background, then I would whole-heartedly embrace it. And wouldn’t that be creative irony, too? The myth pointing to the reality. Alas, God is IGNORED entirely. There wasn’t even a manger at the bottom of a Christmas tree. And for that reason, this film is disingenuine and subversively negative to Christmas. The heart of the story is that people need to believe in Santa in order to rediscover the innocence or goodness within themselves, the exact opposite of the truth. This is symbolized in the idea of singing out of your heart, as in Christmas Carols. And even then, they don’t sing real Christmas Carols. Maybe Santa could have given recognition to the true meaning by noticing a manger under a tree with even a slight nod, or the people could have sung true Christmas Carols as the expression of their “belief” rather than a Santa carol as they did in the movie. Even something as small as that would have been redeeming to the story. But no, we are slaves to postmodern fideism. Believe in a “good lie” is the solution in this film. Believe in Santa. The power is in the subject of belief, not the object of belief. It doesn’t matter that something is false, if it helps us accomplish the good. Let us do evil that good may come. Believe! Believe! Believe! — Just NOT in Jesus. And don’t even get me going on the Easter Bunny…