Church People

A popular youth group pastor at a megachurch in greater Los Angeles (Thor Ramsey) struggles with the assembly losing the point with their perpetual gimmicks while possibly romancing the pastor's daughter (Erin Cahill) and dealing with an unexpected girl from his past (Andriana Manfredi).

"Church People" (2021) is a fun satire with snappy dialogue related to the typical happenings at a large, popular fellowship. Ramsey works well as the protagonist with winsome Erin Cahill offering quality support, along with Manfredi. The only other flick I've seen Erin in is "Boogeyman 3" from 13 years prior; she's reminiscent of Karen Allen. Meanwhile the senior pastor (Michael Monks) is reminiscent of Jack Hayford, who passed away a couple years after this was released.

Stephen Baldwin is on hand as a 'weird' greeter with the uncanny gift of the word of knowledge. There's a great joke involving him near the end.

The flick really won me over at the midpoint with the laser tag sequence and the hilarious meeting of the two females. As for the climax, it revolves around self-crucifixion and is actually moving.

The movie runs 1 hour, 36 minutes, and was shot at Calvary Community Church in Westlake Village, which is in the high country 25-minutes northwest of Malibu, a 45-minutes drive from Hollywood to the east.

GRADE: B.

I really wanted to enjoy this. What a waste of a good premise. After 20 years in a church like the one portrayed here, I thought it might be worth a viewing.

Fellow Christians, please stop giving bad movies high scores simply because they have Christian themes. All that does is encourage more bad Christian movies.

Much of this movie felt like it was written at a church staff retreat after a night of sleep-deprivation. The plot was formulaic and the punchlines easy to see coming. The characters had no depth and their quirks were more cringe-inducing than endearing.

It was sad to see Donald Faison's life sucked out of him with this role.

You could see his eyes closing over a little more each time he was onscreen. The cheesy exit of his character was so lame I'm suprised they didn't take him out to the pasture shoot him afterward.

This movie was not good. I had high expectations going in because I really really liked the idea for this movie. The Christian church has become, in a lot of ways, a huge production masking itself as a way to reach people. Yet in doing that the gospel has been so watered down, and pushed to the side. So when I saw the trailer I got hyped, thinking it was going to be brutally honest about the modern church. In a lot of ways it is, but man it was way too over the top.

The biggest problems with this movie, however, is the script and the acting. The script is trash. And a lot of times it's incredibly weird. Their are actually a lot of incredibly awkward scenarios and lines in this movie. Some that talk about listing after maniquinns and other weird stuff like that. Furthermore, the acting is also terrible. I really think it's mainly cause the script is so bad, but nonetheless everyone does terribly in this movie.

There is one very very good thing about this movie, and that is its presentation of the gospel. Most Christian movies I've seen always have bad acting, script, writing, and a terrible presentation of the gospel. They do a fantastic job of illustrating what the Gospel really is. So for that, I applaud them.

However, everything else about this movie is incredibly weird, off putting, and beyond over the top. But all in all they did present the gospel clearly and I'm glad they were able to do that!

Needed some tweaking in editing. A countdown clock to the day/hour/minute would have added a sense of urgency as well as comedy. Characters were nice written and stereotyped for some laughs. The base is SO there but needs some refining in the script as well. Great message :)

Like another reviewer, I got hyped about the title and trailer content hoping for a sobering satire on the gimmickry of American evangelicalism. But I'm not sure this effort isn't about 20 years late. The mid to late 90's were especially laden with style driven controversies as so many churches were transitioning away from "traditional" worship styles toward a "contemporary" style.

The early adopters of not only contemporary worship style but felt-needs driven, socioeconomically profiled, ministry that blew up into mega churches are kind of a thing of the past. The current threat to the sincere presentation of the gospel message in churches now is something different i.e. Progressivism, technocracy, mysticism e.g. Soul soaking, wokism etc. This would present a considerable writing challenge but is a far more timely theme.

But that aside, this film has big issues as it is. The acting was mostly bad. Another reviewer mentioned the script being trash. I have to agree. But I think some of it could have been salvaged by some different writing/directing decisions. For example, way too much onscreen time was devoted to a weak plot vector having to do with stopping the crucifixion stunt itself. It may seem counterintuitive, but this stunt should not have been the main focus anymore than it was the real problem the characters needed to solve.

The problem for the antagonist is the appetite the church has for the stunts and gimmicks but the plot was consumed with stopping a gimmick. This needed to happen but the onscreen time was disproportionate toward this effort and only a tiny bit right at the end was devoted to the change of heart by the pastor which was hard to buy in to.

The scene with Guy's daughter was very poorly conceived. This is an example of the writing/direction decision making I was referring to. This was just half-baked. She walks in, announces she is his daughter and he is just like "Sup?" This was an opportunity for some real acting and deserved to have some of the awkwardly long Tino screen time shifted toward it.

Stephen Baldwin's character was just plain weird.

William Baldwin's talent was wasted talent on his brief role. Could have used him for the lead and had Thor play a supporting role? Maybe he was offered this but passed on it?

The Blaze character was too flaky. This made it impossible for any real enlightenment to occur with him.

I am a big supporter of Christian film. I can forgive a lot but I paid $20 to watch this via SalemNow. I am very disappointed. I can't let you off the hook just because your heart was in the right place.