Lately we’ve been attempting to “trade” resources during our conversations with the religious, where we will agree to watch a religious movie or read a religious book and the other party will agree to watch an atheist video or read an atheist book. Unfortunately it hasn’t worked out very well, as we listen to the sermons or watch the documentaries, and then we find the other party dismayed that we weren’t immediately converted and they then renege on their end of the bargain (apparently lying isn’t a sin if you do it for Jesus).
The Christian themed movie “Fireproof” does fall into this category, although several members of our family have also been trying to get us to watch it since it first came out. After having now seen the film, I’m mildly offended by the fact that our Christian friends and family were so adamant that we needed to watch it. For anyone who isn’t aware of the movie, it’s a tale of a firefighter who is on the verge of divorce because he isn’t Christian. Nope, I’m not making that up. This movie actually tries to put forth the idea that any marriage not based on the Christian messiah Jesus is already in dire straights, the couple is already fighting like cats and dogs over inane issues, and the union is ultimately doomed to failure.
I have to wonder if that’s how our Christian relatives view our marriage? Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve been blissfully married to my best friend for four years now (completely Jesus free), and I don’t see anything changing in that department, well, ever.
So onto the film itself, which combines three things I greatly do not enjoy – Kirk Cameron, Christianity, and commercials. What’s that you say? Commercials? Yes, this movie is a 122 minute commercial for the book “The Love Dare.” I’ve read conflicting reports online of whether the movie or the book came first, but since both directly quote the other, it doesn’t really matter. Both are nothing more than marketing tools to get the Christian demographic to shell out the cash for the other. “Fireproof” is essentially the Christian equivalent of a Pokémon movie, as it exists to prompt people to buy other products.
We actually skimmed through “The Love Dare” the other day prior to watching the movie to see what it was all about. The book consists primarily of common sense (and outright no-brainer) tips about not being mean to your spouse and trying to have sex regularly. What baffles me is that there are people who haven’t figured that stuff out yet. Then there are a couple of instances where they bring up Jesus and dare you to pray for your spouse on certain days.
On to Kirk Cameron, another of my least favorite things in life. For anyone not familiar with Kirk, he was on the TV show “Growing Pains,” and is now involved in several Christian ministries with buxom buddy Ray Comfort. For some back story on Comfort, I had a blog about his appearance on Pat Robertson’s show a month or so back that can be found here.
Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort decided to have a fun publicity stunt in which they gave away copies of Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” but they chopped out four chapters and added a 50 page introduction. This intro attempted to equate evolution with the Holocaust (never mind the fact that Hitler was a Christian) and tried to debunk modern biology. Here’s the original video announcing the “special edition” release, in all its mind-numbing glory:
I could respond to each point and explain how absurd the whole thing is, but this lady already did it pretty damn amazingly:
To help you further understand Kirk Cameron, here’s a wonderful clip of him saying something that no one should ever say at any point in time:
Kirk claims he was a “hardened atheist” before accepting the love of Jesus. I’d like to take this opportunity to point out he converted to Christianity at the age of 17, so he wasn’t a “hardened” anything yet (unless you want to count being a “hardened masturbator” as something worth mentioning).
One last little nugget of fun about Kirk, and this one directly pertaining to the movie! In another fun publicity stunt, Kirk refused to kiss the actress portraying his wife in the movie, as he feels he can only kiss his real-life spouse. For the final scene they brought in Kirk’s real wife and shot in silhouette so you couldn’t tell the difference. Apparently he doesn’t understand what is involved in the acting profession. If Kirk doesn’t want to kiss women other than this wife, then he needs to find a job that doesn’t include pretending to be someone else’s husband for long stretches of time. I hear McDonalds is hiring, and they don’t make you kiss anybody.
So now that that’s all out of the way, let’s get onto the movie itself. Actually, scratch that. Before watching this movie, go watch any random episode of “Rescue Me” first. OK, now that you’ve seen an actually compelling firefighter drama, now let’s move on.
The first thing you’ll notice is the absurd number of studios involved in this movie. Affirm films, Provident films, Carmel Entertainment, Sherwood Pictures, and Samuel Goldwyn films all have their hands in this pot. And somehow, it was still a low budget and poorly acted B-movie.
Actually, calling it “poorly acted” is giving it too much credit. The acting was actively distracting in how bad it was. Wooden dialogue delivered in a stilted monotone is the order of the day, for pretty much every character. It was unfortunately obvious that the writers were going out of their way to present a squeaky-clean and church friendly movie, as the firefighters in tense situations never once curse or talk about sex or make off color jokes or do anything else that real people do. We both had a wonderful belly laugh at the unintentional humor of one character proclaiming someone was going to get a “karate chop sandwich!” All of the various characters also always say exactly what they are thinking internally, instead of letting the character’s actions speak.
Another one of the unintentionally humorous moments is worth a special mention. As Kirk Cameron is rescuing a kid from a fire, he realizes it’s really hot in the conflagration, so clearly the best course of action is to TAKE OFF HIS FIRE RETARDENT COAT and throw it to the side. We were in stitches when the exact next scene is of Kirk in the hospital being treated for burns on his arms.
The bulk of the movie shows off how terrible the main couple’s marriage is because of their lack of Christianity, and how Kirk gets religion and suddenly starts being a perfect husband. The abrupt and out-of-character transition from douche bag to perfect Christian man is honestly on par with the bungled Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader transformation in Episode 3.
The source of the writing is always painfully apparent throughout the movie. The “fights” the main couple has aren’t real fights, they are caricatures of fights, like something a pastor would tell a congregation to get a point across. Compelling dramas (say for instance, “Rescue Me”) have fights that show character flaws and development. Here it is just a lame gimmick to get across the point that they don’t get along without religion.
Like in several religious movies we’ve seen, there is a disturbing undercurrent of sexism to the characters. All throughout “Fireproof” we are shown how the women are wrong, we need to shut up the women, the women need to submit and do what their husbands say, the women can only be what their husband’s make them into, etc.
Granted, it’s not as outright appalling as the 2008 film adaptation of Ted Dekker’s “House,” but it’s still pretty bad. For anyone who hasn’t seen that Christian take on horror movies, it actually explicitly says that a woman goes to hell for the sin of having been raped. Please go back and re-read that sentence so that sinks in. Apparently *being raped* is somehow a woman’s fault and puts an eternal stain on her soul that makes her worthy of being tormented for all time. I can’t express my distaste for that movie enough.
Back to “Fireproof,” there is an extended scene where Kirk’s dad tells Kirk he is going to hell for not meeting God’s standard and then explains the Christian salvation plan. At this point we found ourselves wondering who the audience for this movie was supposed to be. Since its mostly likely Christians who are going to see the movie, they don’t need to hear the story yet again. Any people of different religions or atheists are just going to chuckle through the scene, so it’s not really clear what they are trying to achieve with it. It also says something about the Christian mentality that they can’t keep (what they see as) truth out of fictional accounts, as the two are all jumbled up for the religious.
The scene does feature another annoying reminder of the idea the movie presents though, when Kirk’s dad says “You can’t love her because you can’t give what you don’t have.” He’s saying that husbands can’t love their wives if they don’t first love the Christian God, which is pretty ridiculous. Apparently these people aren’t aware of the Christian divorce rate, or that people who aren’t Christians frequently have successful relationships?
After converting to Christianity, Kirk decides to kick his “addiction” to pornography. For some terrifying reason he feels the best way to do this is to smash apart his computer and monitor with a baseball bat. At this point we are sympathizing with his divorce seeking wife, as clearly this man is violent and unable to handle issues in any sort of healthy manner. Apparently he didn’t think through this “solution” to the problem – what’s he going to do when he needs his computer for something else? Never mind the fact that there’s nothing wrong with pornography (Megan and I both watch it, and you’ll note our marriage is pretty damn kick ass), and it’s been shown time and again that masturbation is good for you. Even the extremely Christian Fox News agrees on that point, but since Fox isn’t exactly a valid resource you can also check out this article or this article or about a thousand others.
During the scene where Kirk has his big conversion moment, his dad takes him for a walk in their backyard, where he has a massive wooden cross erected. I’ve always thought this was a pretty sick practice. Do Christians not understand that the cross was a means of execution, and a particularly grisly one? Would you put up a vintage electric chair or gas chamber in your back yard? If Jesus had sacrificed himself with a grenade, would you wear a grenade necklace? It also says something about the mentality of the Christian deity, as he can’t ever come up with a better solution to problems than “human sacrifice.”
So, despite the assurances of Christians that watching “Fireproof” would give us a heart to love God, I have found that post-Fireproof I still lack a heart-on for Jesus. Oh well, there’s still plenty more religious propaganda coming our way!
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