I watched Saved! on DVD yesterday. All in all, a good movie, which could have been a lot better.
I thought Macaulay Culkin did a passably good job, and may have made the transition from cute kid to real actor. Jena Malone is excellent, and so is Eva Amurri as the token sinner. Mandy Moore is a little over the top and overdone, except for the scene where she throws a Bible on someone, great!
This would be another high-school coming-of-age-among-the-bullies story if it wasn’t for the setting, in a Fundamentalist Christian high school. A setting so alien that i’m afraid that viewers from outside the USA will never believe places like that actually exist (but they do).
The movie does very well until the end, when it turns soft and schlops out a fakesy happy ending where everyone gets a boyfriend and they all live happily ever after. Ugh. It could have been a lot more, had they avoided the easy happy ending and introduced more humanity in some of the more stereotypical characters. It’s all there, just not developed enough, for example, in the friendship (affair?) between Pastor Kip and Mary’s mom, who desperally need each other but are kept apart by their beliefs on marriage.
Still, worth a view.
It’s interesting to watch the deleted scenes in the DVD (“Saved Revelations”) to find out what they cut out to keep it PG-13; basically toned it down several notches.
Those involved in Christian music will get a chuckle out of the bands: Godflight and the Christian Jewels. The teen pastor’s sermon (Who’s cool with Gee Oh Dee? Who wants to follow the greatest rebel? The greatest CEO? The most famous of them all?) is also very well done, like Leap of Faith for teens. Not as good a movie, though.
This movie made me sick…mostly because I realize that there are people out there who are actually like this. Sure you may have certain attributes present and others not, but I think it reflects an interesting (disgusting might be a better word) trend in American popular Christianity. I guess I felt more digusted at the reality of the movie and what has happened to a seemingly beautiful thing called Christianity.
Did you see the other movie Mr. Home Alone was recently in?
Well, yes, there are crazies everywhere, and any movement large enough will develop weird splinter groups. At least they’re trying. I’d rather have that then the bland stuff they sell as Christian music these days.
