Saved!   
 

Mary: Jena Malone

Hilary Faye: Mandy Moore

Roland: Macaulay Culkin

Patrick: Patrick Fugit

Cassandra: Eva Amurri

Pastor Skip: Martin Donovan

 

Directed by Brian Dannelly

 

Written by Brian Dannelly &

Michael Urban

 
In the post-Passion world of entertainment we now live in today, there has been this religious fervor bubbling up beneath the surface.  The success of The Passion of the Christ has empowered those few in the "moral majority" to spread the message that theirs is the one true faith.  Saved! comes along at the right time to try to dispel the notion that religious fundamentalism and intolerance are good things.  It's a satirical look at Christianity that is both bitingly funny and heartwarming, with the eventual message that one's personal faith in God or a god is more important than the efforts to indoctrinate others. 

Mary (Jena Malone) is a student at American Eagle Christian High School.  She is a member of the Christian Jewels, a girl band led by Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore).  As she is about to enter her senior year, she learns that her long-time boyfriend Dean is gay.  Her world gets turned upside down as she attempts to do what she thinks Jesus has told her to do in response to Dean's revelation. 

Saved! is structured around this story, but there are many different spokes to the wheel as the subplots involving the other characters all come together.  Cassandra (Eva Amurris) is a Jewish girl attending the school as a last resort to stay away from home schooling.  She lashes out at the rigidity of American Eagle and her fellow students, but has a heart of gold underneath.  Roland (Macaulay Culkin) is Hilary Faye's handicapped brother who serves as a voice of reason as well as Hilary's visual demonstration of the good she does.   

Pastor Skip (Martin Donovan) and his son, Patrick (Patrick Fugit), provide contrasting views of what it truly means to be a Christian, and serve as the most satisfying storyline.  Skip is forced to deal with the contradiction between what he believes and what he feels as his marriage falls apart, while Patrick is more concerned with tolerance and love and the growing attraction between him and Mary.  Skip remains focused on the best ways to get his message across (such as the use of Christian rock music) while allowing his own life to spiral away from him, and it becomes a sad indictment on the way many people refuse to accept their fates because of their fear.

The ensemble cast all do a fine job in portraying their characters, but Mandy Moore has the juiciest role and gives the best performance of the movie.  She is the example of just how impressionable kids can be and how they often receive the wrong message.  She finds other people's actions more significant than her own, and goes out of her way to find fault in others in her efforts to bring more people to her side.  Her resolution at the end is not simply an easy way to wrap up the movie, but is important in demonstrating the consequences faced by someone of her ilk and the way she has to come to terms with the things that she has done.  

Saved! is a morality play.  Each character is painted with broad strokes and used as an archetype to represent some facet of the culture surrounding a Christian high school.  Because of this, the film dips into a couple of moments of heavy-handedness as the characters explain what is plainly visible from the scene in the filmmakers' efforts to get their point across.  These impassioned speeches are meaningful but feel repetitive and slow the movie down.  And, finally, did Jena Malone's character really need to be named Mary?  It's this kind of cheap symbolism that can drag down a movie's effectiveness.

However, despite these few flaws, Saved! is a very good movie meant for everyone to see.  It takes a few humorous swipes at some of the people in the Christian school, but it is not an attack on Christianity.  What this movie is trying to condemn is the kind of blind fundamentalism that serves nobody, least of all, whatever type of god you believe in.  Religion is something you should, ultimately, struggle with.  This film projects that internal conflict well and the different ways people choose to deal with it.