Cast: Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, Macaulay Culkin, Patrick Fugit, Heather Matarazzo, Martin Donovan, Mary-Louise Parker, Eva Amurri, Chad Faust
Director: Brian Dannelly
Producers: Michael Ohoven, Sandy Stern, Michael Stipe, William Vince
Screenplay: Brian Dannelly & Michael Urban
Cinematography: Bobby Bukowski
Music: Christophe Beck
U.S. Distributor: United Artists
Few things are easier to take cheap shots at than fanatical religion, because blind devotion represents a broad target. The challenge for a filmmaker attempting to develop a parody of fundamentalist Christian mores is to find the right balance between smart, edgy humor and the grotesque caricatures that seem to be an unavoidable byproduct of the process. Brian Dannelly, the co-writer/director of Saved!, misses the mark, allowing the caricatures to win the battle. This is a shallow, anti-Christian film that relies on tired stereotypes and familiar situations to tar (and feather) everything with the same brush. The level of humor is sit-com-ish at best and the film's dramatic elements are bland and uninvolving.
The film's main flaw - the kind of narrow-mindedness of which it ironically accuses its subjects (in this case, the less religious a character, the more positively they are portrayed) - might be forgivable if Saved! made an interesting or original point, or just offered a few hearty laughs. But the movie's brand of comedy is too sophomoric to be funny, the characters are developed in facile ways, and message lacks subtlety. Just because I may sympathize with some of what Dannelly has to say doesn't mean I'm impressed by the way he chooses to say it. Sermonizing is sermonizing, regardless of whether the doctrine being preached is based on the Bible of the Church or the Bible of Liberal Politics.
Jenna Malone plays Mary, a member of the Christian Jewels singing group who lives in a Christian House with a Christian Mom (Mary Louise Parker) and goes to a Christian High School. She also has a Christian Boyfriend (Chad Faust), who confesses a Very UnChristian Thing: he's gay. Mary, however, believes that she can save her boyfriend by giving him her virginity. In fact, she believes Jesus has told her to do this. It doesn't work - he gets sent to a deprogramming center and she ends up pregnant. Feeling betrayed by God and her Wholly Holy Friends, she starts hanging out with the few unbelievers at the school, including paraplegic Roland (Macaulay Culkin) and goth Jew Cassandra (Eva Amurri). Meanwhile, the lead singer for the Christian Jewels, Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore), begins a campaign of guerilla warfare against Mary, with the goal of getting her kicked out of school. There's also a subplot involving Mary's mother's affair with Pastor Skip (Martin Donovan), and Mary's mutual infatuation with Pastor Skip's son, Patrick (Patrick Fugit).
Saved! treats religion as a disease, not a life choice. It's something people need to be cured of in order to live a meaningful life. (Maybe they don't have to give it up altogether, but the fundamentalist aspect needs to go.) In order to refine this point, Mary is made increasingly sympathetic the further she drifts from her beliefs. Most of the "true believers," like Pastor Skip, Mary's mother, and Hilary Faye, are shown to be hypocrites. And the sympathetic supporters are non-believers Roland and Cassandra. It doesn't take long before it's apparent that Dannelly's objective with this film is not just to lampoon fundamentalism, but to express contempt for it. In this world, the path to salvation comes through renouncing Jesus, not embracing him.
Saved! wants us to care about its protagonists, but that's an all-but-impossible task considering the lack of effort the script invests in character development. These are generic teenagers with a few personality quirks grafted onto their overly familiar shells. Mary's crisis of faith is used as a plot device; little of the complexity of that situation filters into her personality, except that she suddenly becomes sullen when around her religious former friends. Jena Malone is a talented actress, but the screenplay doesn't give her much to work with. Macaulay Culkin, trying to make the jump from child to adult actor, is credible, although his part couldn't be described as challenging. And Mandy Moore's screen presence is wasted in the shrill, one-dimensional role of Hilary Faye. At least we know that Moore can play a bitch on screen.
In its defense, the movie does a thing or two right, although that's not a reason to see it. For example, the assembly scene with Pastor Skip rallying the class for the new school year is effectively constructed, amplifying the absurdity of the situation without going overboard. There's a cleverness here that is sadly absent from most of Saved! This movie should have been able to provoke a more satisfying reaction than the sense of distaste that dogged my footsteps as I left the theater
© 2004 James Berardinelli