The Antichristian Phenomenon

Not sure how many who actually like to cook around here, or bake bread, but I was doing exactly that at my aunt’s place. As some of you may know, baking bread requires the dough to rest for a certain amount of time, usually thirty minutes or more, so I had nothing to do and joined my cousin who was zapping on the TV. Then this movie shows up and the whole premise sounds very exaggerated and bound to fail: Christian girl attending a Christian school leading her perfect (Christian) teenage life gets to know that not only is her boyfriend actually homosexual, but he also made her pregnant. Now, I am certain most people would go “Ewww!” over that, and I certainly did as well. However, my cousin decided to give this very convoluted plot a go, and I decided that at least I can laugh over how ridiculous it could turn out. The movie does start out decently with an ironical tint in the eye. It would possibly trick you to believe its general message would be religion sucks, but not quite. First we get to follow the main character, ironically named Mary, as she introduces us into what would seem to be the perfect teenage life. Then the scenery changes where Mary and her boyfriend Dean are telling each other secrets while under water in a swimming pool, and Dean tells her that he thinks he is gay. The events that follow are actually pretty genuinely funny, not because it sucks so much. Mary hits her head in shock, she gets a revelation that Jesus is trying to tell her that the only way to save Dean is to sacrifice her virginity to him, so so she does. Of course how Dean could even possibly be physically attracted to her so he can actually bang her is an interesting question, but she became pregnant nevertheless. The first half of the movie then revolves around how Mary is trying to avoid getting caught up and exposed by her more radical Christian friends as well as her mother and how Dean was sent to a place called Mercy Camp that “treats” homosexuals. In the second half, we are introduced to Roland and Cassandra, two students who both attend this Christian school without really being Christians themselves but really got no other choices left unless they would want homeschooling. Cassandra is depicted as your typical troublemaker – but this doesn’t bother you because in a way she is portrayed as an antihero and an antithesis to that which is Hilary Faye, the super-ultra conservative Christian girl who’s the also of course the most popular at the school they both attend. Now the movie tries less to be a comedy and more a drama, and the result is pretty much so-so. What is mostly lacking is character depth. Take for example Roland, who I don’t know who he is and where he came from and what motivates him. It might be that I missed some background introduction scenes while I had to run away to attend the dough, but obviously being wheelchair-bound would still warrant more character development than what he is doing in this very moment, which is basically following Cassandra around (they later become a couple). Roland and Cassandra befriend Mary, because they aren’t as bothered by her pregnancy as others and they support her in her choice to rather keep the baby than aborting it. So what happens at this point is that a war breaks out between Cassandra and Hilary Faye which is slightly over-the-top and unrealistic. It ends up with Hilary Faye spraying cuss words and other offensive statements (to Christians) all over the school walls and then tries to blame Cassandra for it since Cassandra is the trouble-maker. Then there’s the guy called Patrick who has a crush on Mary and also the principal’s son. All of this of course accumulating with the prom as the climax. The problem I had was that Hilary Faye was portrayed as single-minded. There was a mention of how she looked like before she took her diet pills and facial makeup and how that was suppose to fit her inside, with the movie hinting that maybe she really is so aggressive as she is because she’s really insecure and scared deep down, but she doesn’t get more development than that. And same unfortunately applies to the rest of the characters. Tagged along with a liberal message of being accepting and not judgmental, the second half felt cliché and trite. It kind of felt like the movie itself didn’t quite know whether it wanted to be a more light-spirited comedy or a deep drama, and it was really saved by Cassandra’s actor, Eva Amurri. She just stole all the light whenever she was around, because unfortunately, she was actually the really decent actor in this movie, and she carried her character well. Think of Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, and you should get an idea how it felt like whenever she was on the screen. That she lied, stole, smoked and basically did every other immoral thing a teenager can do didn’t bother you so much because you could sense her rebel spirit. It should be noted that Cassandra was also portrayed as a Jew.

Anyway, my conclusion of “Saved!” as a movie is that it’s half-decent high school stuff if one can bother to overlook the extreme Christian overtones. On the other hand, I do like how it tries to approach young Christians (obviously this movie has a very peculiar target audience which didn’t really include me) and tell them that being caring and loving is more important than judging others because they don’t fit into your particular worldview. There’s actually a quite nice quote uttered by Mary which goes; “If God wants us all to be similar, then why are all we so different?”.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 at 10:41 am and is filed under Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.