If you want to watch a movie that is even too bad for TV, you're in for a treat!
"Catching Faith" is just plain awful. The plot follows no true path, and not surprisingly, the writing is just painful. The actors don't add much to the writing, through no fault of their own, however even with good writing it's clear these actors would be lucky to land regular gigs in commercials. Lighting and sound are atrocious. The first scene inside the house is exceedingly bright, and the strange cinematography puts them in poorly lit or overly exposed situations on a regular basis. The sound is terrible as well. Sometimes I could barely make out what an actor was saying.
Given all of that, here are some specific parts of this film that support my review (in no particular order):
- The high school football games are about as unrealistic as it gets. I'm not even talking about the playing. I'm talking about the things that would be easy to fix. For starters, it's rare to see a High School game during the day (especially on a school day??) but you'd NEVER see multiple games during the day. Apparently the production team could only find about 40 people to "fill" the stands. That would be OK if the film crew would do a better job of avoiding the vast amount of emptiness in the stands.
- The acting and writing and stupidity of the plot... uggh, I could not do justice to this atrocity. First off, why is grandma always such a raving bitch to everyone, especially her daughter? That really never gets explained. And then at the end, her daughter makes it sound as if she is "controlling" grandma's life. What a message to send to the viewers. Secondly, high school kids drink sometimes. It's part of life. But dad acts like the kid committed a crime on par with robbery. It's not that big of a deal, and at least he didn't drive! Third, why did NO ONE give a crap that the daughter got into freakin' MIT?? That's an incredible achievement, but they basically said, "good job, now let's watch Beau play his game." Then she's left to feel like crap for considering to cheat on an exam that will never matter to the rest of her high school life, because she was already accepted into one of the best schools you could possibly get into and a B+ in Latin isn't gonna change that.
- What is the deal with this story? The whole time it appears the mom (Alexa) is constantly on edge. I get that anyone would be down and depressed if their father died, but this movie makes it seem as if her life is in shambles. There's a problem, though - they give you no reason to make you believe she lives an awful life. She clearly has 2 good kids and a husband who cares about her. She lives in a nice house. For some reason she's friends with a strange red-haired woman who acts like an asshole all the time, and for some reason her mother is a total bitch to her, but she does nothing to stop either of those things. A rational person would simply stop being friends with the annoying red-head, and tell grandma to shut her big fat yapper once in awhile. But instead this lady appears to internalize it all.
- All of this would make more sense than the real problem with Alexa: her life appears to revolve around her son's football career. She is overly concerned about it, to the point that it wakes her up at night, and it's clearly her main concern. But above all of that - the strangest part is her group sessions with her "Elijah workshop" friends. They talk a little about internalizing things, pretend that somehow god has anything to do with it, but you never see any form of resolution to their concerns (which, btw, range from socks in the cushions, to not doing enough to make your husband happy. So you'll be happy to know that this film follows quite the misogynistic theme).
- But I save the worst part of the movie for last: the 2-point conversion. Oh boy. Here we go. For starters, NO ONE and I mean NO ONE would logically go for 2 in this situation in a football game! It's the championship, for crying out loud. But even if it were a regular season game, no one would do this. You just scored a touchdown in a game where you were down the whole time, and you have no time left. You could tie it with a point and be fortunate to have gotten to overtime. But no... this is where the "faith" part of this crapfest kicks in. You just have to have faith that you'll make it! Gee whiz, how nice. That might be a lot easier to do if you don't call timeout and basically tell the other team that you're not going to kick it... because NO ONE calls timeout on the most routine play in sports, the extra point. But these geniuses call timeout and run to the coach to pitch him their idea, selling him only by saying, "Come on, coach. Have faith." And of course... they make it, because in this universe the opposing team players are the biggest morons on the planet for this one particular play.
The last thing I'll say is that Bill Engvall should stick to actual comedy, instead of a film that's supposed to be heartwarming but instead ends up being laughable.
