The Good Catholic

Enjoyed the development of the relationship between faith and love in a story with interesting, well developed characters. Funny and sad issues that adults can relate to presented in a compelling and entertaining story. Well worth seeing with friends and discussing after. The filming and photography struck me as excellent. Set in small town America, the story presents challenges and moral issues faced by everyone.

I read a lot about this movie and since I'm a Catholic I looked up information about this movie from Catholic websites I could trust. I'm not sure what kind of light this shows Catholics in, especially the monk who smokes and seems to not care about the fact that this priest might be breaking his vow of chastity. Yes, I understand that priests are human and temptations are real. But I think it's important to point out that not all Catholic priests act this way. In fact, when a priest breaks his vow, its a very big deal. It sounds like a funny, romantic movie but its good to keep in mind, especially if you don't know much about Catholics, that this is not 100% accurate.

No matter what you might think this is about from the title, you're wrong. IOW, don't not see the film because of it. It's neither a polemic mocking religious faith, nor does it say anything about religion except maybe why don't we all just sit down and start over. All four primary characters are superbly cast, including Danny Glover who is about 3 steps above anything I've ever seen him in before. The subject matter is handled respectfully, albeit with liberal amounts of humor which zeros in on the fact that most religions take themselves way to seriously--which the production company apparently takes to heart, naming itself Pigasus (sic) Pictures.

This is about as perfect as you can expect an independent film to be. It's only flaw is there being too much lipstick on Daniel--which is so obvious, I wondered if they just wanted to give the audience something to criticize. Needless to say, there's no actual action for the action junkies, but the dialogue and the subject matter are outstanding--and at times, profound. This is my second "10" of the year, (18th all time), the first being only a week ago, so I was wondering if coming out of the summer movie drought has something to do with it.

It' doesn't'.

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!