hankhanks12345

Robin Williams is one of the funniest people of all time. All time! When he's being interviewed, I cry with laughter. And he's made some excellent comedies over the years, such as "Good Morning, Vietnam." What's he doing in this junk? For that matter, what about the other actors? John Krasinki is great in "The Office," and Mandy Moore has proved that she's good too, in her films. Likewise the supporting cast in the film is solid.

So what happened? We have a lot of talented people making an absolute stinker. I guess a couple of Williams' one liners are moderately funny, but nothing like as funny as the lines he whips off without a moment's thought on the "Tonight" show or other things. It's sad.

I suppose I should mention some specific things about the plot. Sadie (Moore) and Ben (Krasinki) want to get married by Sadie's family minister. He has a "marriage course" he wants them to take, which basically involves them doing a lot of foolish and in some cases dangerous things, like driving blindfolded while the other gives directions, or caring for 2 fake babies while they are supposed to be taking care of Ben's friend's actual children.

I guess a rule of thumb is that whenever you find yourself in a comedy where the joke involves a fake baby making green poo, you're probably not in a very good film.

The only thing that makes me give this 3 rather than 1 star is that I like the actors.

I wouldn't rush out to see this movie, but if it happens to come on TV or if you happen to come across it, it's not a bad way to spend an hour and a half. James McAvoy, who is familiar nowadays as the star of "The Last King of Scotland" (no he was not the one playing Idi Amin) and the faun in the first "Narnia" film, does a credible job as a working class bloke who goes to a fancy university and parlays his lifelong interest in trivia into a spot on the academic bowl team.

Along the way he has to struggle with several movie clichés, like having his working class pal from back home break up a party, struggling with classes when life gets hard, dealing with his mother moving on in her life, etc. It's all standard stuff, but done in a light and airy enough way that it passes the time. We see go back and forth between Alice, his gorgeous, smart, and interesting love interest with blonde hair (Alice Eve) and Rebecca, his gorgeous, smart and interesting love interest with brown hair (Rebecca Hall). (An interesting side note is that Alice is played by an actress named Alice and Rebecca is played by an actress named Rebecca.) Some not-bad comedy bits are encountered along the way, but it might have been good to see a bit more of the side characters. Benedict Cumberbatch is terrific but underutilized as the imperious but highly insecure captain of the quiz bowl team, for instance. His character is comically one-dimensional, but in a film like this that's hardly the point. In all, a good but not great film.

When discussing a film like this, it's hard to give an opinion without someone thinking you have a hidden agenda. For what it's worth, I don't have an agenda. I'm not an evangelical, I believe that evolution is real (as is global warming, for that matter), I believe in the separation of church and state. However I'm also not reduced to tears when I find out that someone in the US has view that are radically different than mine.

A lot of things that people allege are "scary" about this film aren't really scary, just weird. If I were watching a documentary about, say, a tribe on some distant continent, and people said that part of one of their religious ceremonies involved speaking in gibberish, I'd probably say, "Gosh, that's odd" or maybe, if I was being uncharitable, "That's silly." I wouldn't, however, be shaken to the core with fear. Some people reviewing this film seem to think, however, that if white, midwestern Ameriancs who are the ones doing the weird religious stuff, then it's extremely sinister and evidence of something terrible.

The woman running "Jesus Camp" has a lot of really extreme political views that I don't agree with, such as the idea that global warming is a hoax, or that the US should be considered a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. I think that's wrong. However, it's her right to believe that, and it's likewise her right to teach kids these silly ideas too. Is it indoctrination? I don't know. But I have a hard time dreaming up a scenario where the government (or somebody) sweeps in and tells her she can't do that that doesn't sound like fascism.

Likewise, consider the Ted Haggarty segment. I know we're supposed to hate the guy, because of things he's said in other forums, and because he turned out to be a hypocrite with regards to homosexuality. However, in this film he basically seemed like an affable, smiling guy. It's hard to see how someone could find him to be a menace on the basis of this alone.

But these are comments about reactions to the movie. Here's a few things on the film itself. I don't really believe the filmmakers assertion that this is a straight, unbiased account. True, the woman who runs the camp says plenty of things that are bizarre, and I don't doubt that her opinions are being presented fairly. However because the filmmakers kept cutting back to the Air America commentator, talking about how Evangelism is taking over the country, it's pretty obvious that the filmmakers think that this strange form of Christianity is both bad and running things. They imply, for example, that the only reason Samuel Alito ended up on the Supreme Court was because of evangelical pressure, as if there was no other reason for him to be confirmed other than that.

However the fact that the film has a clear bias doesn't make it a bad film. It's pretty interesting to see how the kids interact with strangers, for example. It would be interesting to see how they turn out in another 10 years, for instance. Likewise the film has a brisk pace and kept my interest the whole time, and the fact that it made me think is an indication that the filmmakers were doing a lot of things right.