On Theological Fantasy

"Facing the Giants" is in many ways a theological fantasy: God answers prayers.

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Woah there cowboy! That's the WTH statement of the week right there! Why I oughtta...
[Pray that Christians make better films so that people will stop trash talking.] Geez! Jump off the, "since I'm part of the powerful, highly-educated media, I'm fully qualified to make theological conclusions about those foolish Middle American Bible believers in flyover country" bandwagon already!

I'm not sure why I'm surprised that comment went unchecked but I am. The journalist very blatantly assigned his personal values to the piece by including that sentence and everybody at the Washington Post let it slide. It's no different than Rimi Sen's "Rohit Shetty is amazing as a director. He can make even a black African look pretty" statement that went completely unchecked by everyone at glamsham.com. In either case, I guess the entire editorial staff was too blinded by their own values system to notice that either of those statements were a far cry from objective.

This is a statement that makes sense:

A review in the industry trade paper Variety scolded, "by preaching to the converted so heavy-handedly, the filmmakers fumble an opportunity to reach beyond their target demo of devout churchgoers."

Agreed. I haven't even seen the movie and I don't doubt that. I'll probably catch in on dvd. At the same time, I don't think the folks at Sherwood Baptist Church much intended to make a film for everyone. They wanted to make a film for themselves and those like themselves, in which case they succeeded. It's no Blair Witch but $2.7 million dollars after two weeks from a movie that only cost $100,000 is nothing to sneeze at.