Christian Reviewer Warns New Movie 'Saved' Makes Mockery of Faith

by Jenni Parker
May 18, 2004

(AgapePress) - A Christian film and television reviewer and pro-family advocate is warning moviegoers about a new film being marketed in the guise of a Christian teen comedy. But the media expert says audiences need to be aware that this film is not what it seems.

The soon-to-be released movie Saved is a story purportedly about Christian teenagers, set at a fictional Christian high school and starring popular young actors such as Mandy Moore (A Walk to Remember, The Princess Diaries), McCaulay Culkin (Home Alone, Richie Rich), Jena Malone (Cold Mountain) and Patrick Fugit (Almost Famous). But far from being a family film or even an innocent teen comedy, some reviewers are pointing out that Saved may be the most offensively anti-Christian piece of Hollywood hype to hit theater screens in years.

Christian Film & Television Commission founder Ted Baehr warns believers not to let themselves be fooled by some ads that tout the film as a lighthearted satire. He says the upcoming movie portrays Christians as hateful, uptight, bigots and ignorant gossips, and hypocrites. The film carries a PG-13 rating for sexual content, but to the Christian viewer, those scenes might be viewed as the tip of the iceberg.

Baehr notes that even the best of the Christian characters in the story make for poor representatives of the faith. In one scene, the heroine (Malone) has a vision, in which she imagines "Jesus" is telling her to have sex with her boyfriend to "save him" after he announces he may be homosexual. She subsequently gets pregnant and is condemned and ostracized by a former friend (Moore) and the rest of their vicious and self-righteous classmates.

At one point Moore's character promises to keep the pregnancy of her one-time best friend a secret; but then she takes the first opportunity to spread the news around the school in the form of a "prayer request." Then there is the heroine's boyfriend, who is sent to a care center and returns home with a homosexual partner (just in time to crash a school dance) and a fully confirmed commitment to his homosexual lifestyle. And all this while, the heroine's mother is depicted as carrying on an adulterous affair with the school's married principal, "Pastor Skip."

Baehr, who publishes the pro-family Movieguide, described Saved in an Associated Press interview as a film that is downright hateful in its portrayal of Christians, and one that is likely to have a damaging impact on young believers. "A lot of Christian kids, especially the ones that they've been marketing this to, are going to come away with 'Christo-phobia, with anti-Christian attitudes -- you know, 'All those Christians are mean, horrible people' -- and it is not true," he says.

And Baehr is not alone in his opinion. In a review for ChristianAnswers.net, contributor Jeremy Landes wrote that the film was obviously not made with a Christ-centered audience in mind. In fact, he contends, it is apparently designed to appeal to "Americans who, according to most polls, believe a God exists but can't agree on whether He has called them to live according to any standard. The heroes of the film (who challenge their hypocritical principal, parents, and classmates) acknowledge God with their lips, but they live according to their own desires and moral standards, not Christ's."

Even some reviewers for secular publications have panned the film and criticized its mean-spirited Christian-bashing. Reviewer Ed Gonzalez of Slant magazine calls Saved "a film that sees only in black-and-white" and says the spectacle of its most vicious characters and their un-Christian behavior exists primarily "to mock a belief system" and "to promote anti-Christian resentment."

Saved was directed by filmmaker Brian Dannelly and produced by singer-songwriter Michael Stipe of the alternative rock Band R.E.M. Stipe himself characterizes the movie in terms that leave little doubt about how those behind the film regard evangelical Christians. Quoted on an Internet movie site, Stipe compared Saved to "those monster vampire high school kind of movies, only here the monsters are Jesus-freak teenagers."

Instead of going to see Saved, Ted Baehr suggests that moviegoers might want to check out Raising Helen. He says the latter film, although also rated PG-13 for some thematic issues dealing with teens, has a far more positive Christian message.