Yet another film that expands the sub-sub-genre of quirky teen pregnancy comedies.Mary is a good Christian girl, who goes to a good Christian school, and has good Christian friends. Right before her senior year of high school starts, Mary's good Christian boyfriend, Dean, confesses that he thinks he's gay. After the initial shock of Dean's confession, Mary hits her head and has a vision from Jesus, telling her to help Dean. She interprets this as "Have sex with Dead so he won't be gay." And so she does. And she gets pregnant, because their good Christian school and their good Christian parents never thought sex education would be relevant to these good Christian kids. Mary's experiment still did not "fix" Dean and he is sent away by his parents, while Mary must face the remainder of her senior year hiding her own guilt.
Saved! is not really a film about teen pregnancy, but a fun look at how fanatical some people can become in regards to their religious beliefs. As Mary states in her opening monologue, when she decided to accept Jesus into her heart, it was big decision for a 3-year-old. After being spoon-fed religion all their lives, never once questioning it, these teenagers see the world only in black and white, and whatever doesn't fit into their definition of goodly and Christianly, they try to fix or sweep under the rug, because that's how they were raised by parents who were raised the same way. Never question religion: doubt is a sin.
Though the entire teenage cast did an excellent job (love an adult Macaulay Culkin), perfectly embodying the ultimate two-faced, hypocritical, self-righteous, religious zealot teenager is Mandy Moore as Hilary Faye, Mary's BFF in the beginning. She is so completely ignorant in her views of the world that you can't help but laugh out loud, all the while hating her very existence. Though not the central character, she is the best part of the entire film, except for her semi-mullet haircut which is atrocious.
Unfortunately, in its efforts to mock the self-righteous nuts, Saved! begins to beat its own self-righteous message into the viewer in the last 10 minutes of the film. Subtlety is no longer on the table, and the message becomes somewhat patronizing.
Even with its flaws, Saved! is a really fun film to watch, providing ample opportunity to laugh at all those religious fanatics that make you sick and angry in the real world.
Rating:
4 pieces of fan mail:
Great movie! Loads of fun. I'm sure that smug, self-righteous Christians are probably offended by this one, but I believe that real Christians are able to see that it is not Christianity they are poking fun at, but the hypocrisy of the zealots. And, yes, Mandy Moore is incredible!
I lived in Springfield when this originally came out and I heard on the news one night that due to the big Baptist church's protests, none of the movie theaters in town would be showing the film. Stupid Baptists!
My favorite character was the one played by Eva Amurri. I loved the bumper sticker on her car ("Jesus loves you. Everyone else thinks you're an asshole.")
This was indeed a fun movie, made all the better by the fact that I'm a heathen. Still, the writing's there, it's got a good message, and the performances bring it home.
Post a Comment