8/10
(Apparently not everyone agrees! Oh darn.)Comments from other critics
"...though director Brian Dannelly has every right to address and relieve his obvious beef with right-wing Christianity... he makes absolutely no distinction between the good Christian and the right-wing nut. ...this is a film that sees only in black-and-white ...not to promote kindness amongst the masses, but to mock a belief system. ...to promote anti-Christian resentment..."
--Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
"...a sad, bigoted, anti-Christian movie that mocks the Christian faith..."
--Ted Baehr, founder of the Christian Film & Television Commission
"...the adults are all idiots... An irreverent, punchy jab at the more hideous transgressions of fundamentalist Christianity..."
--Duane Byrge, Sundance Film Festival, The Hollywood Reporter
Ted Baehr, founder of the Christian Film & Television Commission ministry, says that the new Hollywood movie SAVED! is a sad, bigoted, anti-Christian movie that mocks the Christian faith.
He urged other religious leaders, including Jewish and Moslem leaders, to warn their constituents about the bigoted movie, which stars Mandy Moore and Macaulay Culkin in a story about self-righteous Christian youths in an uptight Christian school.
“SAVED! is a hateful, politically correct movie,” Dr. Baehr declared. “It is being heavily marketed to the community it mocks to lead Christian youth astray and make them resent their own faith.”
“The one character who tries to preach the Gospel in the movie,” he noted, “is actually the villain. The heroine Mary, played by Jena Malone, has a vision that Jesus tells her to fornicate with the school hunk in order to save him from homosexuality."
"At the end, Mary learns that her only true friends are Cassandra, a irreverent Jewish girl who claims to have been a stripper, and the villain’s brother, who denies being a Christian and lusts after the stripper.”
Dr. Baehr adds, “Cassandra is the real heroine who turns Mary away from the uptight Christian students who believe in faith, values, and the power of prayer. Imagine if this movie were set in an Orthodox Jewish school with faithful Jewish children cast as the villains and a Christian girl shows how legalistic the Jewish girls are. Or, what if it were set in an Islamic school with faithful Muslims cast as the villains and a Christian or Jewish Girl exposes how legalistic the Muslims are? The outcry in the press would be tremendous! Not to mention the righteous outcry from Jews or Muslims!
“Looking at it from the point of view of other faiths,” Dr. Baehr continued, “highlights how bigoted the movie SAVED! is and reveals how MGM is marketing it to Christian children to try to divorce them from their faith!"
“This is abhorrent and people of faith must be forewarned,” Dr. Baehr concluded.
(Revised my rating to an 8 instead of a 9. Dogma was better (in a different way))
