What in the world? That’s according to a recent poll conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. I couldn’t find the actual poll questions, but that’s a pretty weird statistic.
It doesn’t serve the atheist community of Reason well to have one fifth of its ranks engaged is such bizarre double-think.
This is what I found when I went online this morning to think about Fireproof and the upcoming Religulous.
I admit it. That headline was a sucker punch to get you here to read my thoughts on Fireproof. Forgive me for that.
Fireproof is the latest “aggressively inspirational drama from brothers Alex and Stephen Kendrick.” That’s according to a review from Variety. (I’d link to the article, but it seems to have disappeared.) The New York Times even gave it a decent review of sorts. They said the movie has “characters with a strong, conservative Christian faith who don’t sound crazy.” (What a concept!) They also say, the movie is “a decent attempt to combine faith and storytelling that will certainly register with its target audience.”
When the target audience is happy, the bottomline looks good.
I’m not sure if I’m the target audience, but my wife and I saw Fireproof last night with a sold-out crowd. I have to admit I was pretty skeptical.
Here’s how I judge movies. It’s a simple system. The quality of the movie rises in direct proportion to the number of explosions and violent deaths. Here’s how I figure it. I can see people cry in the regular world. But I never get to see people blow up. I don’t get to see buildings or cars blow up either. And frankly, I don’t want to. But in the movies, I can see people blow up and not worry about anyone’s family. It’s all smoke and mirrors, but it is sure great fun to watch.
So I was pretty skeptical about a marriage flick. Not to mention that I was already skeptical about a movie made by a church. Aggressive inspiration isn’t really my kind of aggressive.
Satchel Pootch was thinking similarly last week in her post Art with an agenda. Andy Crouch thinks about art and agenda in his new book Culture Makers.
But then I thought. What’s the risk of allowing myself to enjoy Fireproof? Sure, it’s got some bad acting. Sure, it’s got some scenes where the cinematographer chops off the top of the actor’s head.
But it has a lot of heart.
Much more heart than the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or the latest Star Wars or (God forgive us for paying for it) Space Chimps. So what if it has a moral? Aesop had morals. It’s all a matter of context. Go into the movie expecting to see crowd-sourced cinema, and you won’t be disappointed.
And as far as the business model goes, the Kendricks brothers are really on to something. They invested 500,000 dollars and now they are the number four movie in the US despite being in limited release.
Will Religulous do better? Maybe. It has higher powered marketing depending on how you define power.
But here’s the bottom line. Six million dollars above the cost of production in the first three days. Six million. Not huge numbers, but not bad either.
And eesthetically, the movie is pretty good. It even has some moments that are very good. And when I go see a movie, I’m really only expected a few moments of wow in the end. No matter what the budget, it’s just better to be realistic about how difficult it is to make good movies.
One last thought. Fireproof is at least as good as El Mariachi–the homemade Mexi-western that launched Robert Rodriguez. Should I be morally offended that neither movie is my favorite movie of all time? No.
It is a mistake for Christians to remain silent just because our art might not be good enough.
And it is a mistake to stay home just because someone is still learning their craft.
Fireproof is good. Go see it.
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Would you believe I tried to get Gorgeous to go see it on Saturday AND on Sunday to no avail. You’d think it would be the kind of movie she’d be trying to drag me to go see, not the other way around.
Ah, well.
You had me laughing as I was reading about the Marcus Scale of movie quality. I keep telling Gorgeous that from a guy’s perspective pretty much anything that goes whoosh or boom is good stuff.
Oh, and $6 million + is HUGE numbers for this movie. To make 1360% of your production budget back on opening weekend is phenomenal.
To put it in perspective if the biggest opening weekend ever, The Dark Knight (the latest Batman flick) would have made $2.5 Billion opening weekend instead of it’s record $158 million.
Okay, you’ve convinced me. I’ve been hemming and hawing over whether or not to spend the money, and now I will. Thanks
I can't see religulous…however you spell it. Bill Maher is, in my opinion, mean. A very mean man. There is meanness in his humor and his attitude. It makes me feel bad. And I don't mind listening to honest opinions against the church. If they are funny and right, I'll even chuckle and say, “Mea Culpa.” But Bill is just mean. I don't like that about him. I still watch his show sometimes, but I think given who is producing the movie, this is going to be ugly.
I can't see religulous…however you spell it. Bill Maher is, in my opinion, mean. A very mean man. There is meanness in his humor and his attitude. It makes me feel bad. And I don't mind listening to honest opinions against the church. If they are funny and right, I'll even chuckle and say, “Mea Culpa.” But Bill is just mean. I don't like that about him. I still watch his show sometimes, but I think given who is producing the movie, this is going to be ugly.
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