Saved!
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Movie Reviews of Saved!
Movie Review: Funny and intelligent.
Summary: 5 Stars
"Saved!" is a mostly (and unfortunately) overlooked little film that deftly tackles the subject of religion, and the confusion and hypocrisy surrounding it. Written by none other than REM frontman Michael Stipe, it manages to be a tasteful satire that makes you laugh as much as it makes you think.
The story is centered around a girl named Mary, played by Jena Malone (who by the way is awesome because she's in not one, not two, but three of my favorite movies from the past few years: "Donnie Darko", "Into the Wild", and this one right here). Mary is a straight-laced teenage girl who is devoutly religious, and a top student at a christian school. She has a picture-perfect life, and a boyfriend she's madly in love with. That is, until her boyfriend confesses to her that he is gay. Now, since christianity doesn't take so kindly to the homosexual persuasion, Mary decides that she must try to "convert" him in order to save their relationship and his soul. And how does she do this? By having sex with him. This of course does not work, and not only is the boyfriend still gay, but she is now pregnant. And of course, christianity doesn't take too kindly to teen pregnancy or premarital sex either.
This causes Mary to be shunned by her peers, leading her to question her faith, and everything she's always believed in. She's confused, because she's gotten into this mess because she thought it was what God wanted her to do, and in the end it only made things worse. This leads her on a path of attempting to reconcile her faith with certain aspects of her religion that no longer make sense to her.
This all could potentially be a very dark and depressing film, but Stipe tackles the issues in a very light-hearted but still thought-provoking way. The uproar that is caused by all of these events seems so silly, but at the same time it's the kind of thing that really happens all over the country. Malone is excellent as a character who is so obviously naive, but at the same time is well-intentioned and introspective. She learns important lessons from all of this, and hopefully the viewer does as well. I am a non-religious person, but at the same time I'm not anti-religious either, so I really liked that Stipe chose to take a similar standpoint in making this. It is highly critical of organized religion, and the things within it that frankly just make no sense to me, but at the same time it doesn't completely condemn religion either. It shows that you can still maintain your faith or whatever without necessarily becoming a mindless slave to it, which is why I think that no matter what kind of views you have on religion, you can identify with the movie's message without feeling like you're being told to take one side or the other.
And of course there's tons of great performances here, like Mandy Moore as the hilariously over-the-top religious zealot Hilary Faye, and Macaulay Culkin as her wise-cracking younger brother. Patrick Fugit excellently reprises his prototypical nice-guy role in "Almost Famous" as Mary's new potential love interest, and Eva Amurri (the lovely and talented daughter of Susan Sarandon) stands out as perhaps my favorite character of the film, the rebellious and acid-tongued Cassandra, who as the lone jew in an all-christian school is an unabashed outcast who isn't afraid to tell anyone exactly what she thinks. Her character is especially interesting, because she's initially looked down upon by the whole school (Mary included), but after word gets out about what's happened to Mary, Cassandra is the only one who's really there for her, which is an important part of Mary changing her perspective on everything.
Anyway, this is just a fun, intelligent, extremely well-written film that I highly recommend. Michael Stipe has proven to be every bit as good of a screenwriter as he is a songwriter, and I for one really hope he continues to write more great stuff like this.
Movie Review: very well done skewering of the Christian subculture
Summary: 5 Stars
A film by Brian Dannelly
The movie "Saved!" is a potentially controversial movie that just sort of slipped under the radar when it was released in theatres. At first glance, and without putting any thought into what the movie is actually saying, it would seem that "Saved!" is absolutely savaging the Christian community. The Christians in the film come off as hypocritical fools (at best) and the sympathetic characters are those with anti-Christian behaviors. But that is only the candy coating on "Saved!" The heart of the picture has to do with a portion of the Christian sub-culture which shows a public veneer of popular Christianity but has none of the heart or the message of what Christ taught. That is what "Saved!" is truly lampooning.
Mary (Jena Malone) is a senior at a very Christian high school in a very Christian town. Everything in her world is protected by the "Christian" label, from the music she listens to the Christian home decorators, and so on. The only thing that does not fit into her Christian world is her boyfriend Dean (Chad Faust), who has recently come out to her that he is gay. Since this is an affront to everything she knows and believes in, and she knows that God does not want him to be gay, Mary believes that Jesus wants her to sleep with him to de-gayify Chad. She does, and it doesn't. He is sent away to Mercy House, which is intended to get him the "help he needs". What comes out of this first encounter is that Mary becomes pregnant.
She does not know this at first, of course, so Mary slides into her life in high school where she is friends with the uber-Christian Hillary Faye (Mandy Moore). Hillary Faye is over the top Christian, but filled with bitterness which she takes out on her brother, Roland (Macaulay Culkin). Roland has been crippled since childhood and is wheelchair bound. When the Jewish Cassandra (Eva Amurri) begins school as the only Jew in the Christian high school, Hillary Faye makes it her personal mission to aggressively "save" Cassandra's soul.
Initially, Cassandra is the outcast in Mary's eyes but as her pregnancy becomes more pronounced she becomes closer to Cassandra because Cassandra is the only person who would not judge Mary. Funny how that works. As the movie continues we see the conflict between Hillary Faye, who has turned her back on Mary when Mary questions her attitude, and the outcasts (Mary, Roland, Cassandra). The movie builds, showing Hillary Faye's behavior to be increasingly anti-Christian with perhaps the film's signature scene having Hillary Faye angrily yell "I am filled with Christ's love" as she throws a Bible at Mary's back. Mary had questioned whether Hillary Faye knew what love was.
The ending of "Saved!" is somewhat over the top, but the portrayal of the Christian sub-culture is only somewhat exaggerated. Having gone to a Christian college I know that the characters in "Saved!" are distorted portrayals of actual people. The movie exaggerates the behavior, but these are very familiar situations and images and lines of dialogue to me. But, that is what this film is discussing, and perhaps exposing. The fakeness that some people can have when the cling so hard to the image of what a "good Christian" looks like that they lose sight of what it truly means to be a Christian and about the love that is central to the message of Christ.
"Saved!" is a movie that has a lot of heart and hopefully will find a home and a following on DVD. This is a smartly written and well acted movie (especially Mandy Moore and Macaulay Culkin), and one that is worth seeing.
-Joe Sherry
Movie Review: Insightful about Faith
Summary: 5 Stars
I found two things interesting about Saved!: one is the movie itself, which is a delightful teen comedy and coming-of-age film, where a group of young people at a private Christian high school are confronted with the difficult and complex world that they will have to navigate as adults. This includes issues of sexuality, responsibility, and morality, as well as the difficulty that always goes along with trying to live the ideals of one's faith in the real world. And here the movie's "villain", Hillary Faye, is just as interesting as the "hero", Mary. Both have a strong faith in Christ, and both must confront the challenges that their faith is supposed to help them confront. Both learn, in the end, that faith requires sacrifice and tolerance if it is to really do you any good.
This same issue is faced by the adults in the movie, and here is where I really enjoyed the film. Mary's mother Lillian and her principal Pastor Skip are also deeply religious, and each is lonely: she is a widow who wants, understandably, a man's love and, yes, sex, and he is in an unhappy marriage that really ought to be ended. But Pastor Skip in particular is trapped in an Augustinian legalistic faith that allows no compassion and no compromise, and so he projects his unhappiness onto the young people he is supposed to minister. Hillary Faye absorbs this like a sponge, finding herself trapped in the danger of power and harsh judgment that many Christians fall into, again favoring Augustine's dark view of the world over the loving one of Jesus and the gospels, even as both Pastor Skip and Hillary Faye claim to speak for Christ.
It's a familiar theme in American Christian fundamentalism, to use Christ and Christianity not to love your neighbor but to condemn and judge and hurt those who are different, who are already in pain; the scene at the end, when Pastor Skip is pacing back and forth, caught between his desire to bring flowers to a new mother and welcome a new child into the world and his fear which tells him to condemn them both, to cast that first stone, speaks wonders about the conflict so many Christians struggle with today. And yes, these sorts of Christians exist; I've met them and felt their fear.
The second interesting thing about the film is the reaction it has engendered among Christians themselves. Some see the film, correctly in my opinion, as a helpful warning to their own faith, that the example of Hillary Faye and Pastor Skip is one that every person of faith should heed and avoid. Others, however, have responded with fear, and with anger, claiming that the film is an attack on Christianity and that it is a rejection of faith. Yet the Christians in this film are everywhere, and they are good. They are Mary, whose mistake with her gay boyfriend Dean is founded in love (and teen ignorance). They are Dean, who discovers Christ's love even as his own parents send him away because their faith is weak. They are Patrick, who accepts Mary despite her foolishness, and they are Roland, who despite his claim that he isn't a Christian acts very much like the best of Christian kindness and charity, and they are even Cassandra, who like Jesus himself is a Jew and a rebel. Because they all, like real Christians and real Jews (and real Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists... the list goes on), know that Christianity isn't about judging people but about loving them, about forgiving and practicing kindness every day, about reaching out to those who are lost, who suffer, and who are afraid.
People who most need it, like Hillary Faye and Pastor Skip. And that is the real beauty of this film, because they do.
Movie Review: Aims High and Nealry Hits the Mark
Summary: 5 Stars
I remember when this film was released there was strong backlash against it by conservatives and it never got much in the way of promotion from the studio. Too bad, because it ought to be must viewing for all Christians (and even most non-Christians).
I've read through some, but not all of the reviews to date. Most are positive about the film, but I came across more than few that were negative. One reviewer even referred to it as "Disgusting!"
And I can tell you why that reviewer said that. Because this film turns a mirror on the hypocrisy that far too many Christians engage in, espousing "love and forgiveness" out of one side of their mouth while breathing "hate and vitriol" out of the other.
But, back to our film. In a nutshell, Mary is a devout Christian who learns her boyfriend is gay. For reasons best explained by watching the film, she believes Jesus wishes for her to have intercourse with her boyfriend to make him straight. Naturally it doesn't work and backfire when it turns out that her first and only encounter with sex has resulted in her being pregnant.
From there the film follows her travails as she tries to hide her pregnancy but has her eyes opened to the fact that the world isn't as black-and-white as she once thought. In fact, it's filled with a lot of gray.
As is often the case in this type of film, the bad kids at the school turn out to be the good guys and the school's supposed good kids are either bad or just blindly following the lead of others. And as you might expect, everyone learns a lot about tolerance and the true meaning of Christianity by the end of the film.
In fact, in its rush to have a nice, tidy happy ending, the film has its only real failing - everyone pretty much gets a happy ending. It's even alluded to that Mandy Moore's character, who is obstensively the villain, has had her eyes opened to a less closed mind view of Christianity.
The film is filled with humor, actually rarely at the expense of anyone, and rye observations on the viewpoints of conservative Christians. As a Christian myself, I have to say I am frequently bothered by how closed minded so many conservatives are ( a problem that is growing and being fed by the current political environment in our country).
It features a minister who could easily be turned into a caricature, but thanks to good acting and an intelligent script, it deftly sidesteps that potential pot hole. The preacher is one all Christians encounter at one time in their lives, the minister trying very hard to be "cool." But this is a minister with a few problems of his own, and the film doesn't allow him to descend into being yet another windbag preacher that we can all make fun of and judge harshly for his actions.
All of the acting is first rate. In her role as Hilary, Mandy Moore is gloriously the pain-in-the-arse popular girl that haunts every high school in American; and Jena Malone deftly maneuvers from a simple, devout young girl to a young woman who questions her faith and ultimately reaffirms it.
You'll love the ending, but in hindsight you'll probably feel (as I did), it ends a little too neatly.
Like I said, this should be must viewing for all Christians. It won't be. And many of those conservative types who see it will decide it's a "Hollywood" attack on both their religion and their values. It's not, but it won't be the first time that a closed-mind group fails to "get the logs" out of their eyes and see the truth (for you non-Christians, the "logs" comment is a Biblical reference).
Movie Review: The Best Film of 2004
Summary: 5 Stars
The movie is a realistic yet comical portrayal of the problems of teenagers and criticisms of exaggerated religiousness. The characters are likable and the story flows well. Even the music is well suited for their scenes. The DVD release gave audiences a variety of extra features as well.
The script is witty and genuine. Although the story seems outrageous, the other aspects make it an excellent movie. The music chosen is excellent; Mandy Moore sings "God Only Knows," a version of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" plays and Chantal Kreviazuk's "In This Life" plays during a particularly pivotal scene. The amazing young cast is very realistic in the roles.
The film touched on controversial issues that others refuse to address.
I love the scene where Mary comes back from her appointment with a doctor sure that she is pregnant. She stops by a church and holds out her arms, and in her swearing questions God for the first time. It is a very powerful scene. The prom sequences were also powerful as the climax of the movie.
The story could be examined as an attack on Christianity, but that is far from the truth. It is instead an attack on hypocritical Christians. Scenes that show Pastor Skip trying as hard as he can to use teenage language to reach out to the students is in many ways admirable. His bursts of, "Who's down with G-O-D?" and "I was thinking of something a little less gangsta'" are funny, but they in no way degrade his character. Conversations in an extended scene included on the DVD about whether convicted felons who are saved just before execution go to heaven over those never taught of Christianity are never really solved and are thus left to the viewer to ponder and decide. The biggest attack is on Hilary Faye who means well through most of the movie but often uses her religion to put herself ahead of everyone. The character is commanding and hypocritical. She condemns Mary because Mary stands up for her boyfriend and Hilary frames Mary's group of new friends to get them expelled from the school. Then she lies about it. The whole time she acts as if she is a perfect person and has the right to judge other people for making mistakes. Eva Amurri played the Jewish rebel of the school extremely well and ironically embodies the spirit of a true Christian. She helps Mary when she needs a friend most. It is easy to see why Mary is the one that is happy in the end. The theme reflects humanity; it is living a life as best as a person can while knowing they cannot be perfect. As Mary says, "No one fits in one hundred percent of the time."
The extras on the DVD are abundant. Two audio commentaries are added, one with the crew and one with two female cast members. Bloopers, deleted and extended scenes, a featurette, a trailer and subtitles are also included. The commentary featuring Jena Malone and Mandy Moore displays interesting personal opinions and secrets of production. The rest of the extra features, though abundant, are not as interesting. The bloopers are not very funny. The deleted and extended scenes were cut out for obvious reasons. The featurette is short and the trailer is not the one seen on television. Part of the reason for lack of quality in the additional features is the short shooting schedule. The movie was only filmed in twenty-eight days. However, this is yet just another reason why the movie itself is so wonderful.
Women might like the movie more than men because of the love story involved, but they can be promised at least a few laughs. Overall, this movie appeals to everyone.