Friday, March 6, 2009

Fireproof: Run, don't walk AWAY

Awful, truly awful. This is an evangelical movie with all the swarmy moments intact including how we are so bad that God could never be satisfied and thus Jesus had to be crucified so that we could live (aka substitutionary atonement). It is slow, slow. The characters don't generate any warmth. And at 2 hours, 2 minutes it is about 2 hours too long.

We showed it at movie night tonight. I had heard that it was one of the highest grossing movies of last year and so I was hopeful. (Not my choice.)

There are some redeeming moments. The daily challenges are good: show your spouse respect, listen today, do something unexpected, etc. I'm afraid that gets lost in the slow swarminess.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

There was a great piece about the "Christian" film industry, including the success of Fireproof, on NPR last week; you can find it on the NPR Religion Podcast.

Jules said...

Two words: Kirk Cameron.

That's how I knew it was a "must miss" moment of cinematic yuckiness.