The film follows Caleb, a nineteen year old college student as he struggles with issues of right and wrong in his quest to win the National Moot Court Championship.

I have to say that Caleb comes from a beautifully geeky family, which argues modern political issues by writing Latin phrases on a chalk board. And Caleb chooses to go to Patrick Henry College because of it’s very successful National Moot Court team. Caleb is a true brain jock.

Caleb meets Rachel, a talented veteran of the competition. Their challenge for Moot Court was to argue a Parental Notification case before the Supreme Court. Michael Farris, the Chancellor of Patrick Henry College, playing himself urges the duo to go for the jugular, and challenge Roe v. Wade itself, while Caleb wants to make a lame argument based on parental rights, which he figures has a better chance of winning.

Complicating Caleb’s life are his growing feelings for Rachel, who is staunchly pro-life and all on board with the go for the jugular approach advocated by Farris, and the fact that his mother, a high-powered DC Attorney is arguing the opposition position in the real case moving towards the Supreme Court. Oh, and if Caleb doesn’t win the Championship, he’s not going to be back next year.

There’s a lot to be said about the films flaws, particularly if you demand every film entertain you like it’s a cartoon or action movie. However, the film was a student production done on a budget with a little help from some entertainment industry veterans, so it’s really not fair to even make the comparison. The fair way to judge the film is whether it accomplished what it set out to do.

Given the heady world of academic exercises it inhabits, it tells a compelling story of a family dealing with fundamental big issues. It packs a powerful moral lesson about the importance of doing the right thing. Both Caleb and his father, a University Biology professor who has written a book that could cost him his job. Father and son both wrestle with their consciences on screen. Meanwhile, Rachel is very careful about purity before marriage and earns Caleb’s respect for her beliefs.

One has to say the film is a tour de force for Patrick Henry College. Yes, there may be folks who give it ** and slam it on IMDB, but I doubt sending their kids to Patrick Henry College was something your average negative reviewer would ever consider. Patrick Henry College is portrayed as a school that believes in following Christian precepts, and encouraging young people to act with boldness and courage to transform their world. I’d have loved to have gone to Patrick Henry, but life didn’t work out that way, and when I have kids, I’d love for them to go.

All those Moot Court Championships are reasons why liberals would be well-advised to quake in their boots. The students at Patrick Henry are learning to argue well, at the highest levels of the legal system, and PHC is turning out a great number of Christian lawyers who are ready to win.

The moot court scenes were incredibly well done, and you got a real picture of the competition and its excitement.

Criticisms of the film? There was a lot of underacting going on as well as some very stiff delivery in some places. Also, the movie took a pro-courtship stance but I think failed to explain their beliefs adequately, particularly as it relates to the role of the a Father in most courting relationships. The whole “Courtship” model is so counter-cultural, that it’ll seem weird, even to many Christians. And to others the idea of waiting for Dad’s approval before beginning on the road to marriage seems so old-fashioned, it does deserve some explanation. Also, there were a few places where the sound was weak.

Still, the overarching message makes it a great film for committed high school and college age Christians, in particular.

The Kendricks came on the scene in 2003 with Flywheel, which, on a budget of $20,000, was a hit in local theaters and became big on Cable TV and in rentals. This led to Facing the Giants, a film with a $100,000 budget that made over $10 million. Then last year, on a half million dollar budget, they released Fireproof and grossed $33 million at the box office.

The Kendricks would be millionaires, I guess, if the proceeds didn’t go back to their church to help the church and the community. What is so right with the Kendrick brothers’ films? Three things come to mind:

1) No Pretentiousness

One big fault with many Christian films is they take on projects beyond the film maker’s budget. Movies end up looking unintentionally cheesy when its clear that the film makers really are out of their capabilities.

The Kendricks and Sharewood productions, in contrast, have taken on relatively simple characters: A dishonest car dealer, a struggling football coach, and a firefighter with his marriage on the rocks.

Like many Christian productions, the actors are mostly amateurs, but what makes the Kendrick films interesting is how they cast their actors.  As they know they’re not dealing with professional actors, they have roles assigned to people with similar personalities as the characters they’re playing. The result is, while lines may not be delivered perfectly, the acting feels genuine because, to an extent, most of the actors are playing themselves.

I think this has a good effect when words of wisdom and faith are delivered by supporting characters. You believe them because it’s believable for this person to be telling you that.

The cast’s genuineness spills out with a lot Southern warmth and humor, that comes directly from the setting of the Kendricks movies in Albany, Georgia.

The Kendricks make no pretensions about their films being up to Hollywood snuff. They don’t fake it. They don’t tell you they’re somebody they’re not.

But if the movies aren’t Hollywood production quality, what makes them so popular? Perhaps the key to understanding their secret is a Greek-Irish dance duo called Stavros Flatley.

2) Emotional/Spiritual Connection

Stavros Flatley was a father and son team on the most recent season of Britain’s Got Talent.  You could see a good father-son relationship on stage, a joy of dancing, and a total lack of self-consciousness about their looks. They made it all the way to the finals. After their finals performance, Simon Cowell talked about how some “snobbish” critics had attacked the success of Stavros Flatley in making the finals.

Cowell explained it this way. “It’s all about the way you make people feel, and you make people feel good.”

The secret of the Kendricks movies is that, while the acting may not be superior, the movies connect with people in their hopes, dreams, and faith.  When I’m feeling discouraged, there’s no better movie to watch than “Facing the Giants,” particularly the “Death Crawl” scene (which has got to rank among the best sport scenes ever in terms of raw power.) When I see, “Flywheel” it gives me hope for loved ones who have gotten away from God.

Many of the critics operate under the mistaken assumption the Kendricks’ films are for them. It’s really about the audience and how the films connect on an emotional and spiritual level.

Of course, the greatest key to the Kendricks’ film is….

3) The Movie’s Hero

Who’s the hero in the Kendrick’s brothers films? The lead role in the first two films was played by Alex Kendrick. In the third film, the role went to Kirk Cameron. But the ultimate hero of the story is none other than God himself.

The Kendricks’ leads are not larger than life. They are not self-made men. The movies are not a tale of their exploits. Each movie centers on the faithfulness of God.

Critics have claimed that the films preach a gospel where all problems are solved by coming to Jesus. This is not what the Kendricks were going for, nor is it what the films teach. The films don’t teach, “If you follow God, your life will be perfect.” Rather they teach that God is faithful.

The difference is important. To say that nothing bad will happen is to deny reality. Human experience is full of lost jobs, heartache, death of children, and disease. To say that God is faithful is to say that God is with you and will not leave you, that he has a plan and a purpose. All of the Kendricks’ heroes suffer and eventually reach a point of agreeing to follow God regardless of what happens. Coach Taylor in Facing the Giants said it best, “If we win, we’ll praise him. If we lose, we’ll praise him.”

God can be faithful through all kinds of circumstances. A job may be lost, but God has another plan. A child may die, but God can bring peace and strength to carry on.  The films speak a basic truth. Not that God came to make life easy, but that God cares and will be with us in what we go through. It is that hope that speaks to the heart of the believer that truly has made the Kendricks films successful where many better-financed efforts have faltered.

Now, Faith Like Potatoes was an okay movie, but there were a few flaws in it. This led me back to a blog post at Big Hollywood about how Christian films have been bad for decades. Dallas Jenkins asks why Christian movies are “so bad” and says they’ve been so for decades. He identifies Christian abandonment of Hollywood and lack of encouragement of young people to be great artists. Fair enough points that I wouldn’t dispute, but also it fails to answer the question. Most of the Christian movies over the past few decades were not made by young people who were not encouraged to be great artists.

These movies were made by middle-aged men often as amateur efforts. Two of the more prominent professional Christian film-makers of the period, Rick and Dave Christiano were not raised in the church, so it hardly seems fair to blame the church for any perceived deficiencies in their work.

So let’s take Jenkins’ question and give it a proper answer.

1) Many Christian Films are not “bad” just different

To begin with the whole comparison of Christian and Secular films is really off particularly if one wants to go back 20 years. Comparing particularly early Christian films to Hollywood blockbusters is simply unfair.

Most of these films were made with different purposes than Hollywood movies. To judge a Christian film (particularly an early one) by Hollywood standards would be as silly as judging an instructional video by the same standard we judge a movie. In our current culture, we expect to be constantly entertained, but many Christian movies are made with the purpose of ministry first, with concern for entertainment value of secondary importance to touching hearts and providing a message. It used to be and perhaps in many places, it still is the situation that Christian films are used for outreach in a very direct way.

There’s a place for subtlety if the goal is to entertain a wide audience, but what if your goal is instead to touch the hearts of people? Maybe your approach will be a tad more direct. Of course, it’s pretended that if one wants to use cinema to share about God, one must very discreet and subtle about it. I’d disagree. Many people are tired of being spun by politicians and now being spun by religious people who won’t be real enough to say what they really believe.

Yes, these type of ministry films may not entertain you. They may not be the type of films you feel like having a “blockbuster”night with to which I say, “Get over it.” Everything doesn’t have to be about your own amusement and if people have come to Christ through films that may not be up to Hollywood standards, God bless the film-makers. 

I think that even through today, Christian films put a high emphasis on the actual story and the message of what happens. Secular critics are impressed with films when every actor on the screen portrays a total sleezeball who learns that they need to live to actualize their own sleeziness. (This isn’t to say all Hollywood films are bad, but the sleezefests that so many critics praise are.)  Christian films are different in both the moral focus of the characters and the meaning of the story.  

2) The Second Coming  of Christ as a Cheesy Spy Story

Since the early 1990s, many Christian films have begun to seriously compete with Hollywood beginning with the Omega Code, a movie starring Michael York (yes, Michael York) as the anti-Christ. Michael Ironsides plays the false prophet-wannabe who pouts like a four year old when the anti-Christ offers the job of false prophet to a hyper religion professor. “You said I could be the prophet.”

Overall, the movie wasn’t too bad if one likes somewhat cliched action flicks. Of course, there’ve been a glut of end times films ranging from the totally awful Six: The Mark Unleashed  to the far more tolerable, Judgment (I pity the foo who don’t like an end times movie with Mr. T. in it.)

Six was an incredibly depressing film. I love Stephen Baldwin but he was downright creepy in this film and not in a good way. The film had all the worst tropes of end-times movies including a message, “There’s nothing that can be done.” This may be true in the end times but send a horrible message about today.

The End Times genre is done to death because I think some people imagine that’s the only way they can portray Christians as being cool and doing cool things.  However, Christian films have ultimately got to rise above the level of schlock.

3) Books Chosen Poorly As Film Sources

More of the most recent Christian films have been based on Christian novels, unfortunately with mixed results. Adapting a novel to film is tricky and it seems to be especially true with Christian novels.

“The Visitation” was an okay book by Frank Peretti turned into a really stupid horror movie. “The List” may have made sense as a book but on film it was a real mess.

4) Projects that Are Too Big

I think that one of the biggest mistakes Christian film-makers make is taking on too ambitious of a project, particularly in first efforts.

Carman made a film called, “The Champion” as his first and heretofore only silver screen effort. The film featured a boxer coming out of retirement to win a last big fight to save his rec. center. Oh, by the way, he wanted to include a romantic sub-plot. Oh, and then for kicks, they had a scene where you had a gratuitious car chase followed by a pick-up truck bursting into flames.

The Judas Project was a film I didn’t even make it thirty minutes through. One of the big turnoffs was a Transfiguration Scene that was so cheap it was practically high school. It’s a fair enough request to ask that a film that is going to portray God’s miracles try and make them look good rather than shortcut it and make it look cheap.

Aother big example of this is Christian biopics of which “Faith Like Potatoes” was one. A good biopic takes time, usually about 3 hours to pull off right. I’ve seen people try to cover the life of Fanny Crosby in forty-six minutes. Far more sensical, but still anecdotal and somewhat disconnected was a Bob Jones University production on the life of evangelist Robert Sheffey. I think the one thing I didn’t like about Faith Like Potatoes  was that it not only jumped around, but did so in a way that made it hard to judge the passage of time. It told an incredible story of faith and God’s faithfulness, but because it was in such a rush, it didn’t take the time to tell the story as well as it could have, and the viewer spends much of the movie going, “What just happened?”

I think Christian films do far better when a first film is somewhat less ambitious. And of course, there have been some good Christian films and hopefully in coming weeks, I’ll be able to blog about them soon.

It’s a fantastic drama about a firefighter whose marriage is falling apart and what they do save it.

It’s a fantastic, heartfelt film that I recommend.  

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K23hSajG2K8[/youtube]

The movie is #4 at the Box Office this weekend in limited release (less than 800 theaters.) The critics have their issues with the film, but this is the third film by the Kendrick Brothers and this one has already made 12 times what it cost to make it. Maybe, the critics will figure out, movies aren’t made for them.