Taking pot-shots at organized religions

Saved! (2004)
MGM/United Artists presents a Brian Dannelly film, starring Mandy Moore and Jena Malone. Written by Dannelly and Michael Urban. 92m. Rated PG-13 for strong thematic issues involving teens - sexual content, pregnancy, smoking and language.

1.5 stars

When it comes to examining religion within the context of a movie, there’s always at least one party pooper.

In “Saved!” the new film about the inhumanity of teenage girls at a fundamentalist Christian high school, writer/director Brian Dannelly plays the role of spoil-sport. His distaste for those who take their religion seriously is neatly confined within the 92 minutes of this relative junk.

“Saved!” plays out like a poorly researched high-school term paper, where the teacher has red-lined almost every paragraph and written at the top in big bold letters, “And what about the other side?” In the film, everyone who isn’t a Bible-thumper is redeemable, but those who praise Jesus more than take his name in vain will be ultimately be exposed as hypocrites by the self-serving agenda of the writer.

Perhaps one of the few things that Dannelly and I might agree on is that acceptance into a Christian school doesn’t make you a better Christian. That can certainly be said for Mary (Jena Malone), the stock “troubled teen” who believes Jesus has called her to lose her virginity to her Christian boyfriend Dean (Chad Faust) to save him from the “perils” of homosexuality.

Mary hides her premarital transgression from friend Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore), who espouses Christian doctrine at every turn. Even a cursory reading of the Bible will tell you that few ever lived on Earth without sin, so it’s not surprising Hilary Faye has her own skeletons in the closet.

Perhaps the irony of “Saved!” is that Mary rejects her Christianity at moments when she may need it most. Now pregnant and alone, Mary finds herself more comfortable in the “out crowd,” buoyed by Jewish rebel Cassandra (Eva Amurri) and paraplegic Roland (Macaulay Culkin). The outsiders fly in a veritable “no spin zone” where Christian hypocrisy is met with contemptuous attitudes.

Those who try to bring Mary back into the flock are painted in the most unflattering strokes imaginable. Pastor Skip (Martin Donovan) lives with the “shame” of a pending divorce while he carries on a sexual liaison with Mary’s mother Lillian (Mary-Louise Parker). Hilary Faye will do anything to keep her wealth, her beauty and her popularity in the forefront of everyone’s minds. She ends up as a character most of us remember from our own high school experiences: the person that tries too hard to be liked.

So what do we take from the senior class of American Eagle Christian High School? There’s a message of tolerance, delivered by Dean at the film’s outset. But Dannelly is trying to reverse 2,000 years of firmly held doctrine in an hour and half film. Those who have made the biggest steps in gay rights haven’t done so by attacking and overwhelming the religious factions; rather, they’ve concentrated on our secular entities, which actually form the laws that govern us.

An attack on the most passionate of any religion is too easy of a target. Perhaps if Christian-centric films dominated the marketplace, these lampoons would be more justifiable. And while there are films that have been cited by Christians for having commendable themes (such as Moore’s first star role, “A Walk to Remember”), there aren’t any overtly Christian message films that are making big splashes at the weekend box office.

Sure, fundamentalists of any religion are troubling characters. But like the essay example, Dannelly has missed the other side of the argument. What if Hilary Faye did not have Christ’s message in her heart? What if Pastor Skip didn’t try as hard at the pro-Jesus rally? Teen-agers who are extremely passionate about religion are oftentimes looking for a stabilizing force that puts meaning to their own tangled existence. Would Dannelly rather these children get their fix from television, drugs, or sexual promiscuity? If we’re going to examine extremes, let’s make sure we comprehend both ends of the spectrum.