Saved

Well, I would say I just wasted a good solid $5 tonight. I couldn't find anything else to do tonight except to just stop at Blockbuster and pick up a few flicks. Good news is now I get two free movies of them, but it hardly seems worth it when you pay $5 to rent a movie, but anyway... So, I rented Saved because I wanted to see if it had anything particularly profound to say about Christians. It turns out it was more along the lines that I had previously suspected it to be: not particularly profound, just uncreative browbeating of the audience.

Here's a synopsis of the movie taken from another review, I don't feel like typing all that out..

Jenna Malone plays Mary, a member of the Christian Jewels singing group who lives in a Christian House with a Christian Mom (Mary Louise Parker) and goes to a Christian High School. She also has a Christian Boyfriend (Chad Faust), who confesses a Very UnChristian Thing: he's gay. Mary, however, believes that she can save her boyfriend by giving him her virginity. In fact, she believes Jesus has told her to do this. It doesn't work - he gets sent to a deprogramming center and she ends up pregnant. Feeling betrayed by God and her Wholly Holy Friends, she starts hanging out with the few unbelievers at the school, including paraplegic Roland (Macaulay Culkin) and goth Jew Cassandra (Eva Amurri). Meanwhile, the lead singer for the Christian Jewels, Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore), begins a campaign of guerilla warfare against Mary, with the goal of getting her kicked out of school. There's also a subplot involving Mary's mother's affair with Pastor Skip (Martin Donovan), and Mary's mutual infatuation with Pastor Skip's son, Patrick (Patrick Fugit). (James Berardinelli 2004)

When I first started watching the movie, I was fully prepared to take whatever criticism the director had to dish out concerning Christians simply because I'm just as bitter sometimes about the stupidity that I see happening, but this movie didn't have very much of a constructive nature to put forward. See the review that I linked to above. He puts it really well I think.

The only thing that really stood out to me in the movie was that there really are people that think most Christian culture is just that out of touch with reality. This movie is basically "Clueless" meets "Jerry Falwell"... Not a pretty combination. So, obviously... not all Christians are like that. Well, what we are extremely guilty of as Christians is believing that everybody who holds the title "Democrat" or "Liberal" (or whatever really that we pre-judge) is somehow a totally senseless fool that is only interested in hating God and loving pleasure. That's only one stereotype, we've got gobs of them. Now, unfortunately, this movie reinforces that notion simply because the message the director portrays is that religious people are all idiots and true salvation is found by just forgetting dogmatics and just loving and accepting each other. The ultimate hippy message. Regardless, we as Christians need to be careful of that. So, that's one thing I left the movie with.

The other was that people are screwed up in general, Christian or not-Christian. Surprise, huh? Yea, I'm telling you, this movie was just that profound. So, I walked away with an overall sense of wanting to be careful about what I think about people and being more thoughtful in that respect. That's about it... Oh, and I should just read the reviews before a movie and save myself the $5...

Good night all... :)