The Good Catholic

Movies reflect the values of the people who make them. Most of those people are Liberal or even Leftist. So you get thousands of movies per year with a Liberal or Leftist perspective. One of those perspectives is that religion sucks.

Whenever I see Danny Glover listed in the cast of anything other than Lethal Weapon, I expect some kind of touchy-feely message.

Yet I would not consider this film anti-Catholic. Our main character is very earnest in wanting to serve both God and his congregation. He just struggles with his faith, like many people.

The three-man staff of the parish is meant to represent different potential versions of priests. One is old and conservative, one is old and a bit cynical and silly, but still committed, and one is young and confused.

To their credit the film makers did not make the old conservative one out to be a bad guy. No one molests children or does immoral things.

But what disturbed me was that the spoiled, cynical slacker-woman character is portrayed as the righteous one who teaches life lessons to the out-of-touch clergy. Yet her life is a mess. That part is typical Indie glorification of melancholia.

While the dialog hinted at profundity, it never quite gets there. The Glover character does challenge the silly woman, but he is made out to look rude, while she's the hipster.

Someone should have told the main young character to loosen up, instead of just implying it. Meanwhile someone should have told the woman that trendy self-pity and dishonesty are not becoming.

The Midwest college town setting and slow pace are refreshing compared to the typical L.A., New York, Chicago, Miami redundancy. But pregnant pauses and focused shots of a contemplative face do not create depth. The dialog still has to do its job.

A 4-actor film and religious plot has necessarily to communicate much and good to be acceptable. In this case we have a lot of confusion. It is very difficult to find God from the safety and protection of a religious community. God can be found in the difficulty, need and suffering, rarely taking part of a congregation whose way of life is living comfortably. Here we have 4 characters and 4 situations the first one, the superior that believe himself infallible and with right to humiliate. Second; the priest who apparently is normal and flexible but who punishes and make kneeling to one boy who is wrong in singing. Third:The smart protagonist who tries but does not find God and Fourth, the girl who gets tired of not finding something worthwhile in this life, sleeps in a coffin and its motto is "See Jane Die". (Possibly, she is the only one who has God closer). The film is sometimes lacking in rhythm and is only valid for those who endure movies with religious theme. Nothing new.

I grew up in a place and time when "The Thorn Birds" (1983 mini-series adaptation of a novel about a Catholic priest's forbidden love) was so hugely popular that, for at least a decade afterwards, references to and re-makes/adaptations of this premise kept popping up without losing the audience's attention. I mean, as far as "forbidden love" goes, this kind of premise is extremely advantageous: there's high stakes, there's tension, there's existential angst and crisis of faith, moral dilemmas and heartbreak...

You'd think it almost can't go wrong

But apparently it can, and it did in this film, which is SO bland and uninspired it's painful to watch.

The young (uber-hunk) priest is struggling with grief and a general lack of faith, but only in words. He repeats "I'm struggling with grief and a general lack of faith" several times throughout the film, but he totally fails to convince, despite the tears, because there isn't a story to back this up.

The woman (=love interest) character is totally random. She's apparently obsessed with death because life seems meaningless otherwise, but we don't find out anything about her that would turn her into a three-dimensional character. She's just quirky for the sake of being quirky. Everything she says (because this film is all about what people say, they don't really do much) amounts to "I'm so quirky, look at me, I'm so occasionally depressed and obsessed with death!"

And then there's the two supporting priest characters whose role and (lack of) depth can also be summed up in one-liners: there's the "I'm proper and wise and old-fashioned" and the "I'm quirky and rebellious and clearly here for comic relief, while also demonstrating that faith isn't necessarily about following all the rules or taking yourself too seriously".

Yeh so that's it. What I wrote above is the whole film. I swear there's absolutely nothing else in it. Every scene seems pointless because it just goes through the motions of its generic tag: "the crisis of faith scene", "the boy-meets-girl scene", "the break-up scene" oh and the should-have-been-powerful-but-ended-up-complete-nonsense "awkward dinner scene".

Don't waste your time. If the premise appeals to you so much go watch The Thorn Birds.

A lot to think about, that's what this film gives you;there will be laughs,and also tense and sad moments;my friends and I had an interesting discussion after watching it, but most of all :no one liked the end ... frustrating ...you see, there's a lot of stories with 'open ends',and most of the times it works; as for this one, we all wanted to see EVERYTHING on the screen,without having to decipher anything at all.Wren Schmidt is lovely here;Glover:finest work ever;Mcginley, hilarious as usual but also moving(must see);Spicer was a revelation to us: very good acting.Don't miss this film!

THE GOOD CATHOLIC finds a decent young man trying to follow a path set out for him by his father, that of a Catholic priest. We can sense from the first scene his restlessness in the confines of this dogma-bound and tightly constricted role. He yearns for meaning in life and thought to satisfy that yearning in the priesthood but finds himself embracing phantoms until an edgy and clever young woman enters his life. She claims to be dying but touches him with her spark of individuality and suddenly he understands his life can be more than a period of long waiting for the end, more than fear of hell and hope of heaven. The movie evokes very powerfully the deep yearning of youth for a lifetime story of love and meaning, for experiencing something intense and alive before it's too late, the awful fear that youth has that it will never be young.